Flume

Brian Evenson’s fiction maps the forbidden territories of genre, innovation, transgression, and literature. With one foot in the avant-garde and the other in the pulp tradition, Evenson’s stark vision is never comfortable, always provocative, and, more often than one might think, darkly amusing.

The new novella “Flume” is a workplace comedy, of sorts. Is Flume a scientific foundation, a man, or a pair of shoes poking out from behind a curtain? Is Davies (or is it Davis?) up for a promotion, ready to end it all, or perhaps both?

“Prairie,” a prose poem about the haunted starkness of the American West, will stay with you night after lonely night.

Is literary style an illusion? Is it a dark smear marking a reader’s mind? Evenson explores these questions and more in “Anamorphosis.”

“Truth or Consequences in Non-Realist Fiction: What Are We Reading For?” is an examination of the taxonomies of genre and literary fiction, and how marketing categories influence readerly aesthetics for good…and ill.

You’ve heard of unreliable narrators, but how about unreliable writers? “A Report on Labor” is the best advice for writers you will ever read.

And featuring an in-depth Q&A with new series coeditor Nick Mamatas—topics include censorship, Mormons and Freemasons, H.P. Lovecraft, teaching writing workshops to college kids, and the pitched battle between the labor movement and artificial intelligence.