After the Rapture

After the Rapture is a flash fiction hybrid book written at the intersection between flash fiction and the novel. A leader and innovator of the form, Stohlman fragments the long form narrative into the distilled intensity of micro and compressed fiction while still maintaining a larger story arc.

After the Rapture is a flash fiction hybrid book written at the intersection between flash fiction and the novel. A leader and innovator of the form, Stohlman fragments the long form narrative into the distilled intensity of micro and compressed fiction while still maintaining a larger story arc. Nancy Stohlman has authored four previous books of flash fiction including The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories, The Monster Opera, and Madam Velvet's Cabaret of Oddities, which was a finalist for a 2019 Colorado Book Award. Her flash fictions have been anthologized in the W.W. Norton anthology New Micro: Very Short Stories and in Macmillan's The Practice of Creative Writing: A Guide for Students. Her flash fiction craft book, Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction, won the Readers View Gold Award and was recently re-released as an audiobook. She teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder and runs workshops and retreats around the world.

"In this world of Walmarts, Barbies, Kens, orgies/time-shares, 7-11s, clones, a red Lake Michigan, and dreams, Nancy Stohlman's humor and talent shines. The rapture becomes more than just a rapture: it's a world turning on its head, acceptance, and then finding a new normal. Redeeming and heart-felt, this dystopian novel-in-flashes is one not to forget. After the Rapture is a rapture!"--Kim Chinquee, three-time Pushcart Prize winner, author of seven collections and the novel, Pipette

"After the Rapture is a startling, rhapsodic, brilliant tome. Stohlman dares to venture into an intricate mosaic of layered, futuristic identities, individualities, and lives both wasted and yet fully explored. A dazzling oscillation of scintillating prose, on the threshold between the ephemeral and the eternal. After the Rapture is a book full of surprise and wonder, a compelling and majestic book."--Robert Vaughan, author of Askew, Funhouse and Addicts & Basements

"Mesmerizing, challenging, funny, awesome, entertaining, bewildering, full of doom, wisdom, absurdity, and heart. I love how gigantic and scary Biblical personages and events are swallowed up by commercial / pop culture. It's ridiculous, genius, and moving, all at the same time."--Robert Shapard, co-editor of the Norton Flash Fiction anthologies Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction Forward, and Flash Fiction International

Fiction. Hybrid. Women's Studies.

Nancy Stohlman is an award-winning author, performer, and rabble-rouser. Her books include Madam Velvet's Cabaret of Oddities (Big Table, 2018), The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories (Pure Slush, 2014), and Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2020), which won a 2021 Reader Views Gold Award and is forthcoming as an audiobook. Her work has been anthologized widely, appearing in the Norton anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (W.W. Norton, 2018) and The Best Small Fictions 2019 (Sonder Press), as well as adapted for both the stage and screen. She teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder and around the world.