In Disappearing Debutantes, disappearing and ever present “female beginners” come-of-age in fantasy and reality. As children, girls, teens, “new adults,” middle-aged women, and old women, they keep having their debuts and going unnoticed. Erased by gender, time, age, and those they most want to see them, neglected females become strange in hopes of being loved, being listened to, being understood, and being seen.

Though society has no interest in allowing them to make a grand entrance on a life they keep trying to live anew, and though the bloom is long off the rose that never fully opened, each disappearing woman refuses to make a graceful exit or to blossom into the perfect flowery fem society wants her to become. Instead, she boldly celebrates her oddly transformative disappearance from a life that didn’t go as planned by exploring a self-charted, self-made, surreal world of love, longing, lust, and lore.

“Surprising, shocking and stunningly honest, this collection of sharp, witty, sad, funny stories will keep you guessing and marveling at their ingenuity. Strikingly original.” – Sean Lusk, author of The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesly

“Beautifully unbecoming, these stories unzip themselves, spilling the accoutrements of maidenhood and wifedom, a witch’s alphabet of iris petals, cat’s eyes, and shark-sharp teeth. Parkison and Pokrass have written a bespelling book, both timely and timeless.” – Joanna Ruocco 

“What’s better than one master of the flash form? Two of them, taking stories where you never thought they could go.” – Robert Shapard

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Meg Pokrass is the author of five flash fiction collections and a book of prose poetry, Cellulose Pajamas, for which she received the Blue Light Book Award. Her work has been widely internationally anthologized, most recently in New Micro (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018), Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015) and The Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019. She serves as Founding Co-Editor of Best Microfiction 2020 and teaches flash fiction online and in person. Find out more at megpokrass.com.

Aimee Parkison is the author five books of fiction, including Refrigerated Music for a Gleaming Woman, which won the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. Parkison has been published in numerous literary journals. She is full Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at Oklahoma State University. Find out more at www.aimeeparkison.com

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Preorder here. Ships September 1, 2023