Kissing the Monster Hunter is a new chapbook about monster hunters, unseen monsters, perpetual dreamers, and the creatures (human and otherwise) who love them. The unmissable prose poems and micros in this collection thrust us into an alternate reality where hope, love, and intimacy, when gone unrecognized, become a mystical force to be reckoned with.
In this wonderful mingling of reportage and dreamscape, Nessie’s appearance becomes a beacon for lovers. Here we have a collection with a ripple effect; one story causes another, widening and deepening the ultimate mystery of ourselves. Who can forget the monster hunter’s baby teeth? The insistence on love at all costs? Reading Pokrass’ work is akin to a Nantucket ride, once you start, there’s no stopping. Darkly comic and wildly original. Brilliant! – Frankie McMillan, author of The Wandering Nature of Us Girls
Surreal, poetic, and strangely beautiful, only Meg Pokrass can take a monster and make it sexy. She searches deep waters and fishes out our curious beating hearts. Another triumph, this book is a love letter to craft from a master of the short form. –Angela Readman, author of Bunny Girls and Don’t Try This At Home
Yes, it’s true! Valentine’s Day is sidling up to us! This quirky workshop is designed for funny/strange/beautiful/ micro-sized love story truffles!
In my popular 3 day microfiction workshop, participants will be using the 100 word story constraint. We’ll be using story models and prompts. My prompts are designed to help all writers break through creative barriers. There will be feedback from me directly on every story, as well as peer feedback. The workshop will be held in a private Facebook group. Cost for the workshop is $100 USD per student.
Numbers of students are limited. For enrollment info, please email me directly here.
You have transformed so many people’s writing lives, mine included! -Frances Gapper
Any micro I have ever published was born in your workshops! Eternal gratitude. – Jenny Stalter
You are such an inspiring teacher. -Nadia Jacobsen
I fell in love with flash in your workshops, Meg! -Karen Schauber
-I’ve ahad many stories published that originated in your workshops or from your prompts, not to mention your skillful editing suggestions. So grateful for all you do for the micro community. -Kathryn Harjo Silver
Meg has inspired many of us to have our writing dreams come into fruition. -Annie Bien
You have a big shout out in the Acknowlegements of my new book. Couldn’t have written it without you. -Jayne Martin
I am inspired by the prompts and the other students and your marvelous, generous, generative energy. I live with the prompts for a few days, and then start writing (and I’ve been using your newsletter prompts as part of my daily writing practice, too). As a writing teacher, I’m also feeling renewed just by reading your comments to everyone and appreciating the way you work descriptively to help writers see what they have. It’s a technique I teach to undergraduates, and it’s hard for them!, so it helps me enormously to be in the middle of that kind of workshop to feel how it works when I’m not the orchestrator. In the middle of a very lonely pandemic, and sabbatical where I really can’t go anywhere, you’ve created these small, at home residencies that I love. Thank you. –Susan Morehouse
You are the best and one of a kind! – Andrea Disario Marcusa
This was grand, as are all your workshops, Meg. Super subject, terrific feedback, incredibly jaw-dropping talent. Stimulation PLUS fun! – Tracey Meloni
I learned so much from you two fabulous writers/teachers. You opened doors to rooms and worlds I didn’t know existed. Look forward to another workshop – Michelle Morris
In The House of Grana Padano, co-written by Meg Pokrass and Jeff Friedman, each shimmering micro story hovers between standup comedy and the unfolding of tragedy, between the mask and the mirror: A salesman tries on a suit and gets lost inside it; an ex-wife moves into a house made of Grana Padano cheese while her former husband nibbles the corners; and a father folds his daughter so tightly into his chest that her childhood disappears. Two modern masters of the fabulist micro, Pokrass and Friedman stretch language like magicians who are deep into their most amazing acts, creating elusive personas who can mime love, hate, anger or sorrow. The characters in these stories are searching for a moment to grasp, a future in all the dissolution around them, a family to love or curse. This improvisational collaboration between two critically acclaimed authors takes microfiction into a playful surreal universe that is wildly humorous and deeply truthful.
Praise for the book
“Here in House of Grana Padano are deft and absorbing micro-tales, surreal, yet sparked with characters achingly universal in their quest for attainment…Here is an annealing of two major talents, and this is their illuminated manuscript of fabulistic tales with gold and lapis lazuli on every page, and yes, too, the grit and poetry of life.” – Robert Scottellaro, author of What Are The Chances? & Bad Motel
“Jeff Friedman’s wild and engaging images, the stuff of elegant and fabulist prose poetry, and Meg’s Pokrass’s dazzling and unique use of disjunction in line after line, story after story, merge here as these two virtuoso writers just do what they normally do. But here they do it together.” – Pamela Painter, author of Fabrications
“Jeff Friedman and Meg Pokrass prove that collaborations, in the hands of masters of short prose, can be revelatory. Like two seasoned jazz musicians, their imaginations play off each other, so that their tales–the astonishing and often quirky worlds and characters they create–avoid the randomness found in so many failed surrealistic prose poems and microfictions. You never know what’s coming next, but, somehow, it all makes sense.” – Peter Johnson, author of Old Man Howling at the Moon
