REVIEW: “Flekke” by Joshua Jones Lofflin

Review of Joshua Jones Lofflin, “Flekke,” Flash Fiction Online 151 (June 2026): 8-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Infertility, infidelity.

After having spent many years now review speculative fiction on this blog, I’ve learned that there are many things that I will forgive in a story if it is in a speculative genre. When the speculative overlay is missing, I’m much, much more judgemental. In the case of this story, I honestly don’t understand what the point is — why tell an ordinary story about ordinary life and ordinary sins, when there are so many extraordinary stories that could be told instead?

This one was definitely not for me.

REVIEW: “Lizzie Williams’ Swampy Head” by Joshua Jones Lofflin

Review of Joshua Jones Lofflin, “Lizzie Williams’ Swampy Head,” Flash Fiction Online 138 (March 2025): 14-16 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I often find short stories told in the voice of a child annoying, because far too often that voice feels cloying and fake. Not so at all with Lofflin’s story, which had all the sorcery inherent in a passel of young girls — he nails it.

(First published in MetaStellar May 2021.)