DOVELION AT SMALL PRESS TRAFFIC REPORT!

 

I'm grateful to Small Press Traffic and editor Syd Staiti for featuring an excerpt from DOVELION. This EXCERPT moves me to discuss two evident elements relating to form and structure. DOVELION contains about 330 sections, all beginning with "Once upon a time"--this reflects its preconceived constraint to begin with those words and see what happens (obviously, DOVELION happened ). The second element is the non-chronological order of the mentioned dates. This doesn't disrupt linear narrative/time so much as evidences what I call "Kapwa-time" whereby time compresses past, present & future into a Now. 

May this excerpt that accounts for 1.7% of the novel's text move some of you to read my first novel. Book info at https://eileenrtabios.com/fiction/dovelion-a-fairy-tale-for-our-times/

"TAKING IT SLANT..."

Isabel Cuenca, “Untitled” (2016). Acrylic on canvas, 48"x48"

My short story -- or perhaps it's a prose poem, says the mischievous genre-disruptor -- entitled "Taking It Slant From Those February Days" is now up at the Fil-Am Artist Directory's Ekphrasis Feature. It's a work "after" Isabel Cuenca's painting. I share that work as I want to encourage fictionists, not just poets, to participate in the Ekphrasis section -- the Call for Writing is HERE. So, short short, anyone?

Meanwhile, you might notice that my story presents dated sections in reverse chronological order. It's not just about a riff off "slant," though that's appropriate. The story reflects my years of tinkering with disrupting linearity in narrative. Theoretically, one could read the story in a chronological order (per the dates) or just in any order and (if it works) it still would be valid.

Hope the story and this Ekphrasis Feature is of interest, and inspire some of you -- poets and fictionists (and, actually, any other creative writing genre. Short plays, anyone?) -- to participate!