Stella Pierides

I am thrilled to report that:

my short story/flash ‘The Silence in my Cell’ is now online in the May edition of Tuck Magazine. They say it is a MUST read! See what you think. It can be read here

my tanka ‘Tin Mug’ now appears in ‘ars poetica 2′ – newest poems of Poets Online. It can be found on their site here  (This is a bit more complicated to find: go to Archive, click newest poems/ ars poetica 2)

Deathmatch, a competition for the best short story, is on at the Broken Pencil, Canada’s long running magazine for “zine culture and the independent arts.”

Deathmatch pits two stories against each other and invites readers to vote for their favourite one. The winner of the round goes forward to semi-finals and so on. It is a bit like the world cup games, only with short stories instead of football! In addition, there is interesting discussion about the merits and problems of the stories, which help the readers and writers reflect and consider them from different perspectives (Not easy to find: you need to scroll to the end of the second story).

So now you know, please go over to Broken Pencil and read the stories: Field Guide to Kleptoparasitism, by Braydon Beaulieu and Floppy Discs, by Madeline Masters. And vote! I did, I voted for Field Guide to Kleptoparasitism. Why? Because it is an excellent story, well written, and with rich layers of meaning.

I will not attempt an analysis of the story here. Only a point that resonated with me. I liked the creation of the main character; Tony; to me a product of a marriage between Kafka’s Metamorphosis with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I like the nod to these writers, as I believe in literary genealogy and influence. We are nothing without parents!

While in both books there is a conscience and moral compass somewhere, in the Field Guide the character is skilfully pushed to a moral abyss, with no attempts at redemption.

“…The compound eyes or mandibles”, the predominance of the olfactory sense and consistent use of other animal features in the character’s make-up, not visible to others, such as his neighbour, suggest “animal” morality. Tony does not know better. He has reached the depths of the true heart of darkness. He exploits every single opportunity to his ends and so in the end, the reader is left with an ‘insect.’  Breathtaking!

The development is clear and linear. To me, Tony embodies modern man and woman at their worst: insatiable greed, contempt for others, random acts of envious and mindless destruction. We see flashes of this aspect of humanity in our newspapers every day. A  Field Guide is a complex and memorable story, not drawing back from the abyss. For a better understanding of ourselves, we do need stories that illuminate and explore the underworld of the human mind, “the social patterns of ants.”

I also liked Madeline Masters’ Floppy Disks. A very good story, exploring issues of personal boundaries, privacy and gender. The idea of making artworks of disks containing personal information is interesting, especially at a time of real concerns about personal privacy. Where Floppy Discs fails for me is in the character of Mridula not being fully explored; and in the changes of perspective in the story: jarring.

Visit Broken Pencil’s Deathmatch, read, comment and vote! And enjoy!

My very short, twitter-sized story appeared online in trapeze magazine. Read it here

This short story springs from my interest in robotic arms, dexterity, perception, and intelligence in artificial systems: what robots can and cannot do.

In any case, I am glad they cannot do what the robot in my story does – though as a fantasy it is frightening! Anyway, let us say the moral of the story is, whenever near a robotic arm, it is wise to try not to appear lost for words…

Old Boat

In the years after World War II, a Civil War raged in Greece until 1949 which proved to be one of the worst disasters that befell Greece. Greek against Greek, the Right fought with the Left a war of the utmost cruelty.

This war left many wounds in Greek society. Memories of it still scar the Greek psyche, even across several generations, influencing the current social and political climate.

An important aspect of this war, and the horrendous atrocities inflicted during it, often by members of the same family fighting each other, has been the silence it generated. The trauma robbed people of the words to describe what happened to them, or what they did to others. Whole families stopped communicating; individuals refrained from speaking about the period of the war; history books omitted important events that took place as if they never had happened.

Over the years, the situation slowly changed, especially after the fall of the military Junta and the opening up of the political system in Greece – though even now sections of Greek society insist that there are still many unspoken matters that need to be talked about and worked through.

In my story Postcards, I allude to the period of the Greek Civil War, and to this silence, symbolized by the fighter/husband: he stops using words/language when writing to his wife and instead communicates through drawings in his postcards.

You can read the short story “Postcards” here 

New short story on 52/250 A Year of Flash Week #26:  A hair-raising story. You can read it here

The more one thinks about this story, the couple in it, and the twist at the end, the worse it gets … so, perhaps, it may be best if you don’t read this story! 

My flash fiction story “A Private Person,” appears in the 52/250 flash fiction project, week 25.

52/250 is a project involving around eighty writers from all over the world who made the commitment to write and publish weekly, flash fiction stories for a whole year: 52 weeks, 250 words max! There is a theme for each week, and contributors can suggest themes to the editors.

I joined during week number 25, and my first flash appeared on Friday 5 November 2010. It is a short story about two individuals who see themselves as “private” persons. You can read it here.

The 52/250 project feels like a very encouraging, inspiring and warm place to be. I am going to hang out there… so, watch this space!