Tiny Dancer by Lisa Lang

Photo © Alan McCord

"From her window she watched the street. There were people in good coats – with no pilling, no unflattering bulk – walking with clear purpose, cyclists gliding by. It was late afternoon, night was falling, and the alien, blue-rinsed light settled on her like a kind of despair. She had a sense of being adrift on a vast, indifferent ocean. Whether she ate her dinner or not, went to sleep or stayed awake all night, or even stopped existing, who was to know?" 

Long Story, Short Journal's June 2015 edition is 'Tiny Dancer' : an examination of the solitude required for artistry, detailed in a portrait of a young dancer who is living away from home for the first time. Author Lisa Lang is the recipient of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for her début novel Utopian Man.  CLICK HERE TO READ 'TINY DANCER'. 

Fliers

 She wakes up the way she always does, quickly and slowly. Her pulse, quick quick slow, quick quick slow. Quick, the adrenalin that flashes in her and it feels like she’s ready to run, to fly, the fooled, frail, exhausted body. Slow, being the fog. The numb-skulling pea-souper that doesn’t lift till two in the afternoon. All because of the goddamn pills; the pills she took first for performance anxiety, then when Frank died, and now she is enslaved to their little white wiles.

The August 2014 edition of Long Story, Short Journal is 'Fliers' by UK writer Nichola Bendall, with artwork by Zoë J. Murdoch. The story brings us intertwining narratives of three individuals struggling against lives of confinement, when flight is what they desire. Against the backdrop of political elections, 'Fliers' employs a subtle use of satire, encouraging readers to consider the consequences of both action and inaction. CLICK HERE TO READ 'FLIERS'.