The Time Remaining
by Marlene Buono
[Editor’s Note: Click on the triptych below to view it at full size.]
Marlene Buono’s stories have appeared in Story, Paragraph, and Fourteen Hills. The story “Offerings” was anthologized in Flash Fiction, 72 Very Short Stories and read on Selected Shorts, the weekly public radio show. She lives and teaches in Northern California.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “The Time Remaining”? “The Time Remaining” began as a simple short short, but the prompt to turn it into a triptych was a challenge too delicious to ignore. The third column, one of personal reflections about elements of the story, evoked memories that I hadn’t thought of in years, mirroring Mateo’s experience of a nearly lost recollection. Any one of those bullet points could be turned into a story of its own. At first I thought one had to read the story (the middle column) first before reading the outer two columns, but the conventional left to right orientation works to provide a certain anticipation about what the story might be about. The final column allowed for some very satisfying (and often forbidden) author intrusion.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
09/15 • Abbie Doll
09/22 • Karen Regen Tuero
09/29 • Amy Speace
10/06 • Jennifer Edwards
10/13 • Joseph O’Day
10/20 • Carolyn Zaikowski
10/27 • Sunmisola Odusola
11/03 • Sara Cassidy
11/10 • Liz Abrams-Morley
11/17 • Alison Colwell
11/24 • Lucy Zhang
12/01 • TBD
12/08 • TBD
12/15 • TBD
12/22 • TBD
12/29 • TBD
11/17 • TBD
11/24 • TBD
12/01 • TBD
12/08 • TBD
12/15 • TBD
12/22 • TBD
12/29 • TBD