Aurora Baldealis is a collection of fabulist micro stories by master storytellers Jeff Friedman and Meg Pokrass. Imagine a universe where bald men are mirrors for other bald men, where an angel can break or mend a heart, where the Northern lights glow in the memory of all the beautiful, lost souls wandering this world. Friedman and Pokrass’s Aurora Baldealis lifts the veil of the ordinary world.
Aurora Baldealis by Meg Pokrass and Jeff Friedman is available now.
MEG POKRASS is the author of First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories (Dzanc Books, 2024) and eight previous collections of flash fiction and two novellas in flash. Her work has been published in three Norton anthologies, including Flash Fiction America, New Micro, and Flash Fiction International; Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2025; Wigleaf Top 50; and numerous literary magazines including Electric Literature, New England Review, Lit Hub, McSweeney’s, Five Points, Washington Square Review, and Passages North. Meg is the founding editor of New Flash Fiction Review, festival curator of Flash Fiction Festival UK, and founding/managing editor of the Best Microfiction anthology series. She lives in Scotland, where she serves as chief judge for the Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award.
JEFF FRIEDMAN is the author of eleven collections of poetry and prose, including Broken Signals (Bamboo Dart Press, 2024), Ashes in Paradise (Madhat Press, 2023), and The Marksman (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020. His poems, microfiction, and translations have appeared American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England, Review, and The New Republic. His work has also been included in numerous anthologies including Cast-Iron Aeroplanes That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 American Poets on their Prose Poetry, Flash Fiction Funny, Flash Nonfiction Funny, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, and Best Microfiction 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, two individual artist grants from the New Hampshire Arts Council, and numerous other awards.
Jeff's Facebook: poetjefffriedman
Jeff's Website: poetjefffriedman.com
Meg's Bluesky: @megpokrass.bsky.social
Meg's Facebook: @megpokrassauthor
Meg's Website: megpokrass.com
Now and Then, Now is the second collection of stories from Margot Hover, whose earlier books on spirituality and health, family systems, and research in spiritual care established her reputation in the field of pastoral care. In these stories, her curiosity, humor and deep faith are shaped by her close observations and sensitive awareness of herself and the world around her.
Now and Then, Now by Margot Hover is available now.
Margot Hover, D.Min. ACPE/NACC Supervisor Emerita spent her pre-retirement career first as high school English and drama teacher, then as teaching chaplain at Dallas Parkland Hospital, Duke University, Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and finally, working with pastors throughout rural Illinois and Missouri. She was foster parent for troubled teens before adopting two Cambodian refugee children, and is now proud grandmother of five. She currently ministers as a Spiritual Director. She lives at Pilgrim Place, a retirement community working for peace, justice, and care of the environment.
Email: maggiehpiper@gmail.com
Website: apocketfullofwry.com
The altered volumes included in Book of Books by Tara Tavi contain stories nested within stories. The trapdoors are the books themselves, the stories they tell, the images they show and the physicality of a rectangular prism of printed tree leaves. We fall in, we envision the story, and we enter a third space - our experiences kinetically interacting with the ideas, our personal extrapolation on the words and the thoughts and images they conjure. The ideas resonate out into our daily life, creating new eddies of synchronicity.
Book of Books by Tara Tavi is available now.
Tara Tavi is a multimedia artist and musician who lives in Pomona, CA with her husband Sam McPheeters and cat Blitzen. She’s taught kindergarten and high school Art and believes, “We are all lanterns glowing briefly in the scheme of things. I want to know what illuminates us and what we are projecting out into the universe.”
Instagram: @taratavi
Email: taratavi@gmail.com
