Last week, I posted a teaser of our featured work for June. We continue with the idea of vulnerability this month, as our submissions focus on communication. Whether it is the basic act of trying to interact with another human being or looking to the depths of our souls and expressing who we are, communication is a fundamental component of humanity and one which we perhaps take for granted.
Our fiction this month comes from William Torphy, who has written two pieces of flash fiction about telephones – our lifelines to connection and communication. What can the telephone teach us about the mystery of who is really on the other end of the call and what happens when our cell phone batteries die? Stay tuned to find out.
Hannah Carmack uses her poetry to convey her internal pain. Though our journeys are our own, it sometimes helps us to not feel so alone when we can convey our lives at their worst and see someone nod her head in understanding. We hope some of our readers nod their heads along with Hannah on her poetic quests.
For our visual art this month, we feature Danielle Benedetto, a young photographer who uses her smartphone to create her art in true Millennial fashion. She captures the beauty, the curiosity and the heartache of the world around her, while manipulating images with whimsy and artistry that make them as personal as a fingerprint.
For Fridays in June, Jack is presenting a different twist on podcasting. He’ll be posting links to interviews with published fiction authors in FC’s Podcasts section. This month, they’re from The New York Times Book Review podcast show, cleverly titled “The Book Review Podcast” [is this like when IBM named its first desktop computer “The Personal Computer”?] and are recommended for their high interest value for Fictional Café members. Each podcast, hosted by NYTBR editor Pamela Paul, is about an hour long and has several features. Unfortunately, the Times won’t let us cull the fiction interview from the others, so we’ve put up a link to the entire podcast with a time stamp that indicates where the fiction author’s interview begins. That will allow you to skip directly to the fiction interview, although you’re welcome to listen to the entire podcast, of course. If you enjoy listening to these interviews, please let us know and we’ll make them a regular Podcast feature.
Enjoy, fellow creators and admirers! And if you’re so inclined to communicate back with us, we’d sure like to hear from you.
— Your Baristas
