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Christopher Bowen | James Claffey | Timothy Gager | Tara L. Masih | Andrew Stancek

Christopher Bowen

Pre-release: The Things They Forgot to Tell Us When They Left
If you order this book it will ship on or about October 29th

The Things They Forgot to Tell Us When They Left by Christopher Bowen Červená Barva Press, 2026

Christopher Bowen, author of the novella When I Return to You, I Will Be Unfed, and the non-fiction Debt, was semi-finalist in the 2017 Faulkner-Wisdom Novella Competition and honorable mention in the 45th New Millennium Writing Awards in non-fiction. His short story collection, The Things They Forgot to Tell Us When They Left, is available from Červená Barva Press and he is currently working on a memoir.

Christopher Bowen's work tends to deal with heartache and loss, but pain as a precursor to growth and change. The characters in his fiction are down-and-out, forgotten people, but often through compromises and resolve, they are poetic, if not graceful. There is an overarching story, progression and theme of rural and post-industrial Midwestern America as pastoral backdrop that is incorporated into the narrative that includes familial kinship experiences, blurring the line between flash fiction and flash non-fiction.

"These twenty-five gems by Christopher Bowen showcase the power of flash fiction in the hands of a master. Bowen knows how to wield a sentence and create vivid, compelling, cinematic scenes that play out for the reader like short films. There's a magical quality to these works, with enigmatic characters of depth and substance. These are humans on the brink of change or transformative realization. As a reader, I felt thrust into worlds and characters so fully realized as to suggest a novel's worth of story in the space of only a few pages. That takes tremendous skill. Breathtaking, emotionally evocative stories you'll want to read and reread and keep close. This collection is sheer beauty. Highly recommended."
—Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works

"With a tenderness and transparency that surpasses the most emotive writing, Bowen guides us through life's potholes and triumphs. Each story, no matter its length, is a piece of gold that should be held in your hands, warmed up until it's ripe, and read again and again. There is no overreach here. Bowen writes with a gentleness that is rare yet relatable, his head on your chest, honest and unprovoked. If it was possible to fall in love with a book, this would be it."
—Len Kuntz, author of This is Me, Being Brave

$18.00 | ISBN: 979-8-9965734-3-1 | 41 Pages

Timothy Gager

Treating A Sick Animal Flash and Micro Fictions by Timothy Gager Červená Barva Press, 2009

Timothy Gager is the author of four books of poetry. "Treating a Sick Animal" is his fourth book of fiction. He hosts the Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts every month and is the co-founder (with Doug Holder) of the Somerville News Writers Festival.

Timothy is the current fiction editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review and has edited the book, "Out of the Blue Writers Unite: A Book of Poetry and Prose" from the Out of the Blue Art Gallery.

A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives on www.timothygager.com and is employed as a social worker.

Timothy Gager’s stories came at us like a brisk punch to the heart. His characters are profane and tender, dazed and confused, out of work and short on options. And yet they remain stubbornly vibrant, these damaged children of Bukowski, illuminated by their desires and inflamed by unreasonable hopes.
-Steve Almond, author of The Evil B.B. Chow, Candy Freak, and Not That You Asked

This book is a trip-- or actually it is 40-plus quick and vivid trips into Timothy Gager’s untamed fictional terrain. Sometimes surreal, sometimes all-too-real, these Flash Fictions always surprise. Fasten your readerly seatbelt, choose your own adventure and enjoy the wild rides.
-Elizabeth Searle, author of Celebrities In Disgrace and Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera

Timothy Gager’s flash fictions are full of flashes of insight into the great human predicament.
-Michael Kimball, author of Dear Everybody

Timothy Gager is a compelling and unforgettable writer. These bold and witty little stories limn the peculiarities, and sometimes alarming behavior, of our human species.
-John Sheppard, author of Small Town Punk

As good an orator you’ll find, Timothy Gager flashes a gleam in the eyes while carrying a slouch in the shoulders. His fiction connects to the giggling man as well as it does to the sad man.
-Matt DiGangi, editor, publisher and founder of Thieves Jargon

$15.00 | ISBN 978-0-578-04207-7 | 140 Pages | In Stock

Tara Lynn Masih & James Claffey

The Bitter Kind A Flash Novelette by Tara Lynn Masih & James Claffey Červená Barva Press, 2020

In this spare novelette, acclaimed flash fiction writers James Claffey and Tara Lynn Masih collaboratively create an original tale of loss and love, as The Bitter Kind deftly alternates between Stela, the daughter of a ship's captain, burdened by her family secrets, and Brandy, a Chippewa orphan, haunted by ghost wolves and spirits. The authors cross genres and borders between historical and contemporary, speculative and realistic, presenting two unforgettable characters on a journey toward their inevitable, fateful destination.

"With two writers as well matched artistically as Tara Lynn Masih and James Claffey, a collaboration is cause to celebrate. This richly woven, haunting novelette transcends the confines of its brevity; feels tender, sprawling, immersive. The Bitter Kind is an alchemy, a duet, a gorgeous melding of two of our most treasured literary voices."
-Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018

"With short, alternating passages, James Claffey and Tara Masih vividly illuminate the separate and commingled lives of Stela and Brandy in this original and elegantly textured novella. It is a story, human and soulful, of place, mysticism, and the hard-won ground we all struggle toward."
-Robert Scotellaro, author of Nothing Is Ever One Thing

"From ghost-soaked frontier towns to leafy waterways, frozen river basins, and the open road, Tara Masih’s and James Claffey’s parallel narratives tumble along through stunning landscapes of loneliness and beauty. The writing is evocative and tender, exploring both the haunted and the haunting; touching in its examination of broken things and masterful in its prose."
-Kimberly Lojewski, author of Worm Fiddling Nocturne in the Key of a Broken Heart

"With beautiful imagery and a seamless voice, Masih and Claffey move us through decades as two parallel lives seek solace and healthy human connection. Stela, long plagued by abusive relationships, and Brandy, spurred by tragedy and unlucky in love, are shaped and steered by the things that haunt them, and, perhaps, the things that will someday guide them to heal. This winning collaborative effort is both stirring and satisfying."
-Mel Bosworth, author of FREIGHT and coauthor of Second Acts in American Lives

"With their binocular lyric lenses, Masih and Claffey provide a lacquered and sanded depth to this compilation set in the chambered karst of our heartfelt heartland. The book is a layered lanyard, a laurel wreath, an ouroboros, Mobius’s Mobius, an effortless enso, and a terrific torqueing torus. The diastolic/systolic dub-Dub, a syncopated sink or swim, of the call and response had me reeling, a time step timed to hit the one and the three. What I am saying is that this is a tour de force, a fait accompli."
-Michael Martone, author of Brooding and The Moon Over Wapakoneta

Reviews:

"To read The Bitter Kind is to witness two writers who, in this slim 68-page volume, manage a marvel by beautifully performing two seemingly impossible tasks... the first astonishing thing about The Bitter Kind: Masih and Claffey blend their styles so seamlessly that, aside from a very few turns of phrase, it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between their voices. The second astonishing aspect of this book is that Masih and Claffey create a rivetingly cohesive central narrative from flash segments... Even more extraordinarily, they form a novelette with the scope and sense of fulfillment one would expect of a much longer work."
Emma Bolden, Tupelo Quarterly
To read full review click here...

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-40-6 | 68 Pages

Andrew Stancek

SAYING GOODBYE by Andrew Stancek Červená Barva Press, 2023

Brief Description of Saying Goodbye
A year in the life of a six-year-old Slovak boy being brought up by his grandparents in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia. In this flash story of childhood and self-discovery, filled with heartbreak and joy, betrayal and love, Adam must invent who he will become.

Andrew Stancek describes his vocation as dreaming - clutching onto hope, even in turbulent times. He has been published widely, in SmokeLong Quarterly, FRIGG, Hobart, Green Mountains Review, New World Writing, New Flash Fiction Review, Jellyfish Review, Peacock Journal and The Phare, among others. Among his contest wins are the London Independent Story Prize, the Reflex Fiction contest, and the New Rivers Press American Fiction contest. His work has appeared in Best Microfiction 2021, the Bending Genres Anthology and Bath Flash Fiction anthologies. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Saying Goodbye is the story of a family reckoning with loss, loyalty, disappointment, devotion, and at the center our narrator, a child as unforgettable as any Dickens hero. Abandoned by his mother, rescued by tenderness, he loses his innocence and finds his courage in a world both unapologetic and lit with the fiercest sort of love. This gorgeous story will break your heart open.
-Nancy Stohlman, After the Rapture and Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction

Some boys get a layer cake, others get abandonment. When young Adam's unstable mother drops him off at his grandparents' Bratislava home prior to his sixth birthday, he knows she is not coming back. Instead he must stitch together a new life, of neighborhood bicycle rides, local shopkeepers, warm strudel smells, and fresh family pain. Andrew Stancek's Saying Goodbye is at once a story of longing and grief, and one of resiliency and tender connection between a grandfather and a boy. "Something good always grows out of something awful, like mushrooms out of manure," Adam says. This is a spare, effective novella-in-flash of one year in a boy's life, beautifully written, memorably told.
-Sara Lippmann, author of Doll Palace