Literary offerings by Tantra Bensko
See Cease, Cows for details.
Chris Moran's review of Tantra's books at HTML GIANT
Interview at Women's Quarterly Conversation
Christopher Higgs interview on Experimental Writing at HTML GIANT
Yuriy Tarnawsky's review at The Collagist
Collapsible Horizon e-book now available
Forthcoming:
story in Dreadful Daughters: Women Writing the Weird
stories in anthology Looking Back
stories in Threadcount
stories in Camroc Review,
stories in And/Or,
story in Exquisis Anthology
story in Ironic Fantastic 3 anthology
story in Imperial Youth Review
a story collection, Yard Man, from Make-Do Publishing
novella Equinox Mirror serialized in Bewildering Stories
Study Writing or Receive Editing
Read articles, interviews, etc. on the writing throughout the site, and find more information about the classes, coaching, and editing, as well as links to writing suggestions and resources HERE.
Explore the Genre of Experimental Fiction
You can learn about it, enjoy it, puzzle over it, find places to submit, with extensive links to publishers, magazines, grants, contests, articles, and a magazine that explains it with examples. You can also read reviews, articles, interviews, etc. on the topic of Innovative Writing, HERE.
Read or purchase LucidPlay Publishing books
Buy Books:
Buy signed print books from author
Collapsible Horizon New literary fiction interwoven short stories 12 dollars plus shipping.
Lucid Membrane (Night Publishing)25 plus shipping for color interior, and 10 plus shipping for B/W.
Buy from Amazon:
Collapsible Horizon print
Collapsible Horizon e-book
Buy Chapbooks:
The Cabinet of What You Don't See 5 dollars to ISMs Press
Watching the Windows Sleep 10 including shipping
Swinging on the Edge of Day from the tiny chapbook series at Naissance Press 5.00 including shipping
Buy Print Anthologies
Surreal South
Women Writing the Weird
Writing Without Walls Subterranea and Naked
North of Wakulla
Redacted Stories
Up, Do Flash Fiction Anthology of Women Writers
Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place
Buy Some Print Magazines:
Cosmopsis
Fabulist
Fiction International
Alchemy Review
Collapsible Horizon New literary fiction interwoven short stories 12 dollars plus shipping.
Lucid Membrane (Night Publishing)25 plus shipping for color interior, and 10 plus shipping for B/W.
Buy from Amazon:
Collapsible Horizon print
Collapsible Horizon e-book
Buy Chapbooks:
The Cabinet of What You Don't See 5 dollars to ISMs Press
Watching the Windows Sleep 10 including shipping
Swinging on the Edge of Day from the tiny chapbook series at Naissance Press 5.00 including shipping
Buy Print Anthologies
Surreal South
Women Writing the Weird
Writing Without Walls Subterranea and Naked
North of Wakulla
Redacted Stories
Up, Do Flash Fiction Anthology of Women Writers
Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place
Buy Some Print Magazines:
Cosmopsis
Fabulist
Fiction International
Alchemy Review
Some of the books and anthologies can be found here:
Membrane: "The analysis revealed objects, shaped like Frisbees or flying carpets, with two spatial dimensions: membranes . . . . The mathematics made clear that all of these entities could vibrate and wiggle, much like strings. . . . For the multiverse story, it is the branes that are central. Using them, researchers have been led by the hand to another variety of parallel universes. . . . In the braneworld scenario, our universe is just one of many that populate the Brane Universe." Brian Green The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos
Free Books
To read a free e-chapbook of poetry: Liminal, by 10 Pages Press.
Richard Hugo's Use of Sound in Relation to Content in his Poetry A 150 page book of interest to Hugo fans and anyone wanting to learn more about how to make sound amplify meaning in prose or poetry.
Some Stories and Poems in online Magazines
"Frogs" Sein und Werden
"PhotoluminAssence" Poor Mojo's Almanac
"Mama" In Between Altered States
Poems Other Voices
"III" in Mad Hatters Review Annual
"Birdie" in Birkensnake
"The End Begins Now" in Blue Five Notebook
"To Explain the Sasquatch Sitter" in Ten Thousand Monkeys and Southern Hum
"Lizard Back" Collapsible Horizon
"Passage" Collapsible Horizon
"Yard Man" The Cabinet of What You Don't See
Some of my Novellettes in magazines:
The Inhabitants of Mercy in Retort Magazine
Animals Under the Skin 1 in Bewildering Stories
part 2
part 3
Hairilyzation in Poor Mojo's Amanack
Sleeping with the Clan of Saints in Unlikely Stories
Going Out of Context with the Friends of the New Paradigm in Newtopia
I hope you find something in those links you enjoy. Over 200 of my stories are in journals and anthologies. Much thanks also to all the other magazines and anthologies including these: Colorado Quarterly, Mad Hatters Review Annual, Medulla Review, The Writing Disorder, Metazen, Birkensnake, Carolina Quarterly, Mississippi Review, Hawaii Review, Cease, Cows, Literary Orphans, Stone Highway Review, Blue Five Notebook, Anenome Sidecar, 13 Myna Birds, Egophobia with translation into Romanian) Sun Dog, Spittoon, New Dead Families, Counterexample Poetics, Abraxis, California Review, Iowa Review of Literary Studies, Southern Poetry Review, Memphis State Review, Logascene, Pheonix, Babel, Cinncinati Poetry Review, Lucky Star, Appalachia Quarterly, Florida Review, Colorado State Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Louisville Review, Soma Literary Review, Magaera, Rose and Thorn, Muse Thing: Colliope Nerve, Newtopia, Bewildering Stories, Cezanne's Carrot, Ten Thousand Monkeys, Mannequin Envy, Rattlesnake Review, Babel, Evergreen, Lit Chaos, Apalachee Quarterly, Spilt Milk, Net Author E2K, Thundersandwich, Dark Romance, Southern Hum, Quantum Genre on the Planet of the Arts anthology, Emerging Visions, Global Inner Visions, The Angler, Microw, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Fiction International, Bewildering Stories, PunkPen, Ironic Fantastic e-book anthology 1 and 2, Short Fast and Deadly, Weird Stories, Orion Headless, REM, Dante's Heart, Evergreen Review, Florida Review, Colorado Review, The Fabulist, Samizdat, Evergreen, Unlikely Stories 2.0, Mad Hatters Review Magazine, Gone Lawn, Red Fez, A-Minor, Camroc Review, North of Wakulla, The Anemone Sidecar, and Chattahoochee Review.
Audio
Listen to many exclusive stories at Dog Cast, curated by Dave Migman, of Dog Horn. Here's # 19.
"Green" in Unlikely Stories multi-media
"Accidental Voyeur" was in Mad Hatters Review
"Meditation on the Breath" The Change
"Alligator" e-Buffet
"Really" Egophobia
"PhotoluminAssance" Poor Mojo
To read a free e-chapbook of poetry: Liminal, by 10 Pages Press.
Richard Hugo's Use of Sound in Relation to Content in his Poetry A 150 page book of interest to Hugo fans and anyone wanting to learn more about how to make sound amplify meaning in prose or poetry.
Some Stories and Poems in online Magazines
"Frogs" Sein und Werden
"PhotoluminAssence" Poor Mojo's Almanac
"Mama" In Between Altered States
Poems Other Voices
"III" in Mad Hatters Review Annual
"Birdie" in Birkensnake
"The End Begins Now" in Blue Five Notebook
"To Explain the Sasquatch Sitter" in Ten Thousand Monkeys and Southern Hum
"Lizard Back" Collapsible Horizon
"Passage" Collapsible Horizon
"Yard Man" The Cabinet of What You Don't See
Some of my Novellettes in magazines:
The Inhabitants of Mercy in Retort Magazine
Animals Under the Skin 1 in Bewildering Stories
part 2
part 3
Hairilyzation in Poor Mojo's Amanack
Sleeping with the Clan of Saints in Unlikely Stories
Going Out of Context with the Friends of the New Paradigm in Newtopia
I hope you find something in those links you enjoy. Over 200 of my stories are in journals and anthologies. Much thanks also to all the other magazines and anthologies including these: Colorado Quarterly, Mad Hatters Review Annual, Medulla Review, The Writing Disorder, Metazen, Birkensnake, Carolina Quarterly, Mississippi Review, Hawaii Review, Cease, Cows, Literary Orphans, Stone Highway Review, Blue Five Notebook, Anenome Sidecar, 13 Myna Birds, Egophobia with translation into Romanian) Sun Dog, Spittoon, New Dead Families, Counterexample Poetics, Abraxis, California Review, Iowa Review of Literary Studies, Southern Poetry Review, Memphis State Review, Logascene, Pheonix, Babel, Cinncinati Poetry Review, Lucky Star, Appalachia Quarterly, Florida Review, Colorado State Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Louisville Review, Soma Literary Review, Magaera, Rose and Thorn, Muse Thing: Colliope Nerve, Newtopia, Bewildering Stories, Cezanne's Carrot, Ten Thousand Monkeys, Mannequin Envy, Rattlesnake Review, Babel, Evergreen, Lit Chaos, Apalachee Quarterly, Spilt Milk, Net Author E2K, Thundersandwich, Dark Romance, Southern Hum, Quantum Genre on the Planet of the Arts anthology, Emerging Visions, Global Inner Visions, The Angler, Microw, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Fiction International, Bewildering Stories, PunkPen, Ironic Fantastic e-book anthology 1 and 2, Short Fast and Deadly, Weird Stories, Orion Headless, REM, Dante's Heart, Evergreen Review, Florida Review, Colorado Review, The Fabulist, Samizdat, Evergreen, Unlikely Stories 2.0, Mad Hatters Review Magazine, Gone Lawn, Red Fez, A-Minor, Camroc Review, North of Wakulla, The Anemone Sidecar, and Chattahoochee Review.
Audio
Listen to many exclusive stories at Dog Cast, curated by Dave Migman, of Dog Horn. Here's # 19.
"Green" in Unlikely Stories multi-media
"Accidental Voyeur" was in Mad Hatters Review
"Meditation on the Breath" The Change
"Alligator" e-Buffet
"Really" Egophobia
"PhotoluminAssance" Poor Mojo
Video of Recent Readings
Reading Fall Every Way We Can at Writing Without Walls Berkeley
Drum Naked Writing Without Walls Berkeley
Red Story Come on 7 Chicago
Godhead: Confessional Booth @Now San Diego
Reading at Bernal Literary Series
Samizdat Berkeley
Drum Naked Writing Without Walls Berkeley
Red Story Come on 7 Chicago
Godhead: Confessional Booth @Now San Diego
Reading at Bernal Literary Series
Samizdat Berkeley
Readings
I'm reading with The Fabulist at Why There Are Words at 7 on June 12 Studio 333, at 333 Caledonia Street, Sausalito.
I've read recently at Spice Monkey Cafe for Samizdat, n/a gallery, Oakland for Birkensnake, Bernal Yoga Literary Series, S.F., Book Zoo, with Janice Lee and Anna Joy Springer, Writing Without Walls (Subterranean Art House in Berkeley and Oakland Public Conservatory of Music), at &Now Festival of New Writing: Tomorrowland Forever, in San Diego, at University Press Books in Berkeley, in Tijuana at Pasaje Rodríguez, and at the Ballroom of the Chicago Institute of Art in Chicago with Lance Olson, Eckard Gerdes, A.D. Jameson, Yuriy Tarnawsky, James R. Hugunin, and Davis Schneiderman.
I've read recently at Spice Monkey Cafe for Samizdat, n/a gallery, Oakland for Birkensnake, Bernal Yoga Literary Series, S.F., Book Zoo, with Janice Lee and Anna Joy Springer, Writing Without Walls (Subterranean Art House in Berkeley and Oakland Public Conservatory of Music), at &Now Festival of New Writing: Tomorrowland Forever, in San Diego, at University Press Books in Berkeley, in Tijuana at Pasaje Rodríguez, and at the Ballroom of the Chicago Institute of Art in Chicago with Lance Olson, Eckard Gerdes, A.D. Jameson, Yuriy Tarnawsky, James R. Hugunin, and Davis Schneiderman.
Publication and Awards
I have well over 200 publications of short stories, flash fiction, novelettes, poems, and 5 novelettes including several in magazines that gave awards such: as Carolina Quarterly, where I won the Academy of American Poets Award, Cezanne's Carrot where I won two awards, Punkpen, The Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, and the Oblongata Award from Medulla Review. I was nominated for Pushcart by Blue Five, Rose and Thorn, A-Minor, and Metazen which also nominated me for Best of the Net.
Education
Education: I obtained my BA and MA in English from FSU and my MFA in writing from The University of Iowa Writing Program. I taught at both universities at the time, as well as at Memphis State. I teach Fiction Writing through UCLA Extension, Writers College, and my own Academy online.
