Literary offerings by Tantra Bensko
Workshops ongoing through UCLA X Writing Program.
Courses regularly in Writing the Short Story at Writers.com
Course sign up any time: Interstitial Fiction Genres
Coaching, custom classes, and manuscript editing available
Listen to "Green" (a minute and a half musical recording)
Amazon Author's Page
Insubordinate Books
Subscribe to the mailing list to learn about new books.
Courses regularly in Writing the Short Story at Writers.com
Course sign up any time: Interstitial Fiction Genres
Coaching, custom classes, and manuscript editing available
Listen to "Green" (a minute and a half musical recording)
Amazon Author's Page
Insubordinate Books
Subscribe to the mailing list to learn about new books.
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
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 at Everything Experimental Writing, which is a popular site, HERE.
The Agents of the Nevermind
The Agents of the Nevermind series consists of several stand alone psychological suspense novellas a novels in which the Intelligence agents, masters of social engineering, manipulate people's psyches for the government's agenda. Resisting and exposing their methods of taking advantage of people's gullibility make one a true hero.
They are published by Insubordinate Books, beginning with Glossolalia: A Psychological Suspense Thriller. Nancy sees a crime of poison at the chemical company where she works and her determination to get to the bottom of it shows she's been implicated in it all along. Can she put her pieces together in time to prevent the ruin of nations?
The second novel, Remember to Recycle: Do you ever wonder about how much the men who go through your recycling bins to sell what they find on the black market know about your life? Like who is going to die.
They are published by Insubordinate Books, beginning with Glossolalia: A Psychological Suspense Thriller. Nancy sees a crime of poison at the chemical company where she works and her determination to get to the bottom of it shows she's been implicated in it all along. Can she put her pieces together in time to prevent the ruin of nations?
The second novel, Remember to Recycle: Do you ever wonder about how much the men who go through your recycling bins to sell what they find on the black market know about your life? Like who is going to die.
Genres
Types of stories published in journals, anthologies, and collections: Paranormal, Magical Realist, Slipstream, New Wave Fabulist, Contemporary Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Horror, Strange Tale, Weird, Neo-Noir, Gritty Realist, Literary, Experimental, Quantum, SF, Interstitial, Fabulist, Irreal, Crime. See the Interstitial Genres page for links to several stories divided up among types.
Authors the work is most often compared to: Tom Robbins, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Richard Brautigan, John Barth, Russell Edson, James Tate, Donald Barthleme, Julio Cortezar, Haruki Murakami, Toh Enjoe, Philip K. Dick.
"When Tantra writes a story, characters enter them and come ten doors at once on the other side." Sharon Coleman, author, teacher, organizer
"That one class you taught about Magical Realism changed how I write altogether." Hayley Steele, teacher, organizer
Authors the work is most often compared to: Tom Robbins, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Richard Brautigan, John Barth, Russell Edson, James Tate, Donald Barthleme, Julio Cortezar, Haruki Murakami, Toh Enjoe, Philip K. Dick.
"When Tantra writes a story, characters enter them and come ten doors at once on the other side." Sharon Coleman, author, teacher, organizer
"That one class you taught about Magical Realism changed how I write altogether." Hayley Steele, teacher, organizer
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) 30 dollars plus shipping for color interior, and 25 plus shipping for B/W This is a collectors item, out of print, with only a very few left. Selling for 300 on Amazon.
Equinox Mirror (ELJ Publishing) 18 dollars plus 2 shipping in US, ask about International shipping.
Buy from Amazon:
Collapsible Horizon print
Collapsible Horizon e-book
Equinox Mirror print
Equinox Mirror e-book
Buy Chapbooks:
The Cabinet of What You Don't See ISMs Press (not currently available)
Watching the Windows Sleep Naissance Press
Swinging on the Edge of Day Naissance Press
Buy Print Anthologies
Surreal South '09
Women Writing the Weird
Women Writing the Weird II: Dreadful Daughters
Holdfast Anthology
Cadavre Exquis
Writing Without Walls Subterranea and Naked
North of Wakulla
Redacted
Up, Do Flash Fiction Anthology of Women Writers
Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place
Writing Disorder Anthology II
Looking Back Anthology, Romanian
No Sight for the Saved
Parsec Ink's Triangulation Anthology: Parch
Axolotl
Emmanations
Buy Some Print Magazines:
Cosmopsis
Fabulist
White Stage Beastiary
Mystic Signals
Fiction International
Alchemy Review
And/Or (4)
Journal of Experimental Fiction 35
Zymbol
Latchkey Tales - Clockwise: The Morning After
Collapsible Horizon New literary fiction interwoven short stories 12 dollars plus shipping.
Lucid Membrane (Night Publishing) 30 dollars plus shipping for color interior, and 25 plus shipping for B/W This is a collectors item, out of print, with only a very few left. Selling for 300 on Amazon.
Equinox Mirror (ELJ Publishing) 18 dollars plus 2 shipping in US, ask about International shipping.
Buy from Amazon:
Collapsible Horizon print
Collapsible Horizon e-book
Equinox Mirror print
Equinox Mirror e-book
Buy Chapbooks:
The Cabinet of What You Don't See ISMs Press (not currently available)
Watching the Windows Sleep Naissance Press
Swinging on the Edge of Day Naissance Press
Buy Print Anthologies
Surreal South '09
Women Writing the Weird
Women Writing the Weird II: Dreadful Daughters
Holdfast Anthology
Cadavre Exquis
Writing Without Walls Subterranea and Naked
North of Wakulla
Redacted
Up, Do Flash Fiction Anthology of Women Writers
Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place
Writing Disorder Anthology II
Looking Back Anthology, Romanian
No Sight for the Saved
Parsec Ink's Triangulation Anthology: Parch
Axolotl
Emmanations
Buy Some Print Magazines:
Cosmopsis
Fabulist
White Stage Beastiary
Mystic Signals
Fiction International
Alchemy Review
And/Or (4)
Journal of Experimental Fiction 35
Zymbol
Latchkey Tales - Clockwise: The Morning After
Some of the books and anthologies can be found here: (haven't been keeping it up though)
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
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.
Quantum Genre on the Planet of the Arts Anthology at Paraphilia Press including Kyle Muntz, Marc Lowe, Tom Bradley, Rachel Kendall, J.A. Tyler, and others edited by V. Ulea
Some Stories and Poems in online
"Virus on Fire" Everyday Genius
"Frogs" Sein und Werden
"PhotoluminAssence" Poor Mojo's Almanac
"Hairilyzation" Poor Mojo's Almanac sequel to above story
"Mama" In Between Altered States
4 Chapters in Camroc Press Review
"Spring After Rain" Phantasmacore
"The Lateness of the Night Lies Dreaming" kindly translated into Tamil by Basker
and in English
"Really -- de fapt" translated into Romanian Egophobia
"Projection Theater" in Lorelei Signal will also be in Mystic Signals
"Origami Mafia Story Unfolds" Subtopia
"Ocularity" The Strange and the Curious
Poems Other Voices
"Lizard Back"
"III" in Mad Hatters Review Annual
"Birdie" in Birkensnake
"To Explain the Sasquatch Sitter" in Ten Thousand Monkeys and Southern Hum
"Yard Man" The Cabinet of What You Don't See
"Lizard Back"
Some 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 A Journal of the New Counterculture
I hope you find something in those links you enjoy. I'm proud to say, I've had a couple hundred story publications in magazines and anthologies. My stories and poems appear besides the links above in venues such as: Carolina Quarterly, Chattahoochie Review, Florida Review, Evergreen Review, NonBinary Review: A Grimm Collection of Modern Fairytales, Camroc Press Review, Medulla Review, The Writing Disorder, Metazen, Birkensnake, Zymbol Magazine, Mississippi Review, Hawaii Review, Axololt,The Strange and the Curious, Zoetic Press's Alice in Wonderland, Cease, Cows, Literary Orphans, Stone Highway Review, Blue Fifth Notebook, Anenome Sidecar, 13 Myna Birds, Egophobia with translation into Romanian) Sun Dog, Innovative Fiction Magazine, Armageddon Buffet, Spittoon, New Dead Families, Counterexample Poetics, Abraxis, California Review, Iowa Review of Literary Studies, MiCrow, Southern Poetry Review, Memphis State Review, Short, Fast, and Deadly, TheNewerYork, Logascene, Pheonix, anthologies from Saturday Night Special and Why There Are Words, Sun Dog, Cincinnati Poetry Review, Lucky Star, Appalachia Quarterly, Florida Review, Threadcount, Colorado State Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Louisville Review, Soma Literary Review, Magaera, Darkness Internal, Rose and Thorn, Newtopia, Cezanne's Carrot, Ten Thousand Monkeys, Mannequin Envy, Rattlesnake Review, Babel, 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, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Fiction International, PunkPen, Orion Headless, REM, Dante's Heart, The Fabulist, Samizdat, Evergreen, Mad Hatters Review Magazine, Gone Lawn, A-Minor, WeirdYear, VOX, many Dogcast podcasts, Farther Stars Than These, Ironic Fantastic 1, 2 and 3, Cellar Door III: Hell II anthology, Speculative Fictions, Bareknuckle Poet, Third Point Press, Rivet, Alphanumeric, Rivet, and Red Fez, Strange Little Girls anthology Belladonna Publishing,
Chronopolis Magazine, Ironic Fantastic 4 Anthology (Lewis Carroll tribute)
Audio
Listen to exclusive stories at Dog Cast, curated by Dave Migman, of Dog Horn all with my stories in them listed on this page.
"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
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.
Quantum Genre on the Planet of the Arts Anthology at Paraphilia Press including Kyle Muntz, Marc Lowe, Tom Bradley, Rachel Kendall, J.A. Tyler, and others edited by V. Ulea
Some Stories and Poems in online
"Virus on Fire" Everyday Genius
"Frogs" Sein und Werden
"PhotoluminAssence" Poor Mojo's Almanac
"Hairilyzation" Poor Mojo's Almanac sequel to above story
"Mama" In Between Altered States
4 Chapters in Camroc Press Review
"Spring After Rain" Phantasmacore
"The Lateness of the Night Lies Dreaming" kindly translated into Tamil by Basker
and in English
"Really -- de fapt" translated into Romanian Egophobia
"Projection Theater" in Lorelei Signal will also be in Mystic Signals
"Origami Mafia Story Unfolds" Subtopia
"Ocularity" The Strange and the Curious
Poems Other Voices
"Lizard Back"
"III" in Mad Hatters Review Annual
"Birdie" in Birkensnake
"To Explain the Sasquatch Sitter" in Ten Thousand Monkeys and Southern Hum
"Yard Man" The Cabinet of What You Don't See
"Lizard Back"
Some 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 A Journal of the New Counterculture
I hope you find something in those links you enjoy. I'm proud to say, I've had a couple hundred story publications in magazines and anthologies. My stories and poems appear besides the links above in venues such as: Carolina Quarterly, Chattahoochie Review, Florida Review, Evergreen Review, NonBinary Review: A Grimm Collection of Modern Fairytales, Camroc Press Review, Medulla Review, The Writing Disorder, Metazen, Birkensnake, Zymbol Magazine, Mississippi Review, Hawaii Review, Axololt,The Strange and the Curious, Zoetic Press's Alice in Wonderland, Cease, Cows, Literary Orphans, Stone Highway Review, Blue Fifth Notebook, Anenome Sidecar, 13 Myna Birds, Egophobia with translation into Romanian) Sun Dog, Innovative Fiction Magazine, Armageddon Buffet, Spittoon, New Dead Families, Counterexample Poetics, Abraxis, California Review, Iowa Review of Literary Studies, MiCrow, Southern Poetry Review, Memphis State Review, Short, Fast, and Deadly, TheNewerYork, Logascene, Pheonix, anthologies from Saturday Night Special and Why There Are Words, Sun Dog, Cincinnati Poetry Review, Lucky Star, Appalachia Quarterly, Florida Review, Threadcount, Colorado State Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Louisville Review, Soma Literary Review, Magaera, Darkness Internal, Rose and Thorn, Newtopia, Cezanne's Carrot, Ten Thousand Monkeys, Mannequin Envy, Rattlesnake Review, Babel, 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, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Fiction International, PunkPen, Orion Headless, REM, Dante's Heart, The Fabulist, Samizdat, Evergreen, Mad Hatters Review Magazine, Gone Lawn, A-Minor, WeirdYear, VOX, many Dogcast podcasts, Farther Stars Than These, Ironic Fantastic 1, 2 and 3, Cellar Door III: Hell II anthology, Speculative Fictions, Bareknuckle Poet, Third Point Press, Rivet, Alphanumeric, Rivet, and Red Fez, Strange Little Girls anthology Belladonna Publishing,
Chronopolis Magazine, Ironic Fantastic 4 Anthology (Lewis Carroll tribute)
Audio
Listen to exclusive stories at Dog Cast, curated by Dave Migman, of Dog Horn all with my stories in them listed on this page.
"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 Readings
Reading Fall Every Way We Can at Writing Without Walls Berkeley
Monastery Dolls Bay Area Generations SF
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
Monastery Dolls Bay Area Generations SF
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
Featured at these venues: (this site hasn't been kept up to date since then--)
Story performed at Stagewerx, SF, 2016
Online with NovoPulp Sunday Dec. 13 1:00 PM Pacific Time
Lit Crawl San Francisco, Oct 17, 2015, Zoetic Press
Hotel Rex, San Francisco, Sept, Bay Area Generations
Sci Fi Cafe, Berkeley, June 28
and Dirges, Pegasus, Berkeley, May 20th
Emily Kiernan's Reading Series, Berkeley, April 19th
&Now Festival, March 27, Friends of JEF panel, CalArts Cofeehouse Theater, Valencia, CA
Reading and art, At Studio Morey, Sunday March 7 Oakland, CA
Bay Area Generations #18 February 23rd, Berkeley City Club
All Hallows Backyard Reading Series, Berkeley
Why There Are Words in Sausalito's Studio 333, The Fabulist
Bay Area Generations, Hotel Rex, SF
Spice Monkey Cafe for Samizdat, Oakland
n/a gallery, Oakland for Birkensnake
Bernal Yoga Literary Series, S.F.
Book Zoo, with Janice Lee and Anna Joy Springer for Dog Horn, Oakland
Writing Without Walls at Subterranean Art House in Berkeley
and Oakland Public Conservatory of Music),
&Now Festival of New Writing: Tomorrowland Forever, in San Diego,
Single reader at University Press Books in Berkeley,
Pasaje Rodríguez, with &Now Festival participants, Tijuana
and at the Ballroom of the Chicago Institute of Art in Chicago, AWP, with Lance Olson, Eckard Gerdes, A.D. Jameson, Yuriy Tarnawsky, James R. Hugunin, and Davis Schneiderman.
Story performed at Stagewerx, SF, 2016
Online with NovoPulp Sunday Dec. 13 1:00 PM Pacific Time
Lit Crawl San Francisco, Oct 17, 2015, Zoetic Press
Hotel Rex, San Francisco, Sept, Bay Area Generations
Sci Fi Cafe, Berkeley, June 28
and Dirges, Pegasus, Berkeley, May 20th
Emily Kiernan's Reading Series, Berkeley, April 19th
&Now Festival, March 27, Friends of JEF panel, CalArts Cofeehouse Theater, Valencia, CA
Reading and art, At Studio Morey, Sunday March 7 Oakland, CA
Bay Area Generations #18 February 23rd, Berkeley City Club
All Hallows Backyard Reading Series, Berkeley
Why There Are Words in Sausalito's Studio 333, The Fabulist
Bay Area Generations, Hotel Rex, SF
Spice Monkey Cafe for Samizdat, Oakland
n/a gallery, Oakland for Birkensnake
Bernal Yoga Literary Series, S.F.
Book Zoo, with Janice Lee and Anna Joy Springer for Dog Horn, Oakland
Writing Without Walls at Subterranean Art House in Berkeley
and Oakland Public Conservatory of Music),
&Now Festival of New Writing: Tomorrowland Forever, in San Diego,
Single reader at University Press Books in Berkeley,
Pasaje Rodríguez, with &Now Festival participants, Tijuana
and at the Ballroom of the Chicago Institute of Art in Chicago, AWP, with Lance Olson, Eckard Gerdes, A.D. Jameson, Yuriy Tarnawsky, James R. Hugunin, and Davis Schneiderman.
On the panel at the &Now Festival of New Writing in Valencia, CA Coffeehouse Theater
"a biennial traveling festival/conference that celebrates writing as a contemporary art from: literary art as it is practiced today by authors who consciously treat their work as a process that is aware of its own literary and extra-literary history, that is much more about its form and materials, language, communities, and practice as it is about its subject matter."
"a biennial traveling festival/conference that celebrates writing as a contemporary art from: literary art as it is practiced today by authors who consciously treat their work as a process that is aware of its own literary and extra-literary history, that is much more about its form and materials, language, communities, and practice as it is about its subject matter."
Honors
Carolina Quarterly -- the Academy of American Poets Award, two awards from Cezanne's Carrot, Punkpen, The Iowa Journal of Literary Studies award, and the Oblongata Award from Medulla Review. Nominations for Pushcart include Redacted, Blue Fifth Review, Rose and Thorn, A-Minor, Metazen, and Rivet. Finalist Flash Mob, short list Glimmertrain, top 100 flashes from Wigleaf for 2013. Bewildering Stories inclusion in Quarterly and Annual Reviews, fiction scholarship offered from IU at South Bend after being accepted into the writing program there for high school seniors.
Education
Education: During High School, awarded a writing class at a University in Indiana. They offered me a full scholarship based on writing, but the South called instead. University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, then writing classes at Old Dominion in Norfolk, Virginia. BA and MA in English from FSU (Tallahassee, Fl). Later was recruited as "the number one choice" in the MFA program at the University of Iowa Writing Program, earning a living teaching there until graduation. Screenwriting Certification Industrial Scripts.
Teaching
Florida State University 2 years
Memphis State University 2 years
University of Iowa 2 years
UCLA X Writing Program 4 years -- current-- Intermediate Short Story Writing
Writers College 4 years -- Experimental Fiction
Alchemy Collective -- beginning monthly classes
Writers.com during 2015
Lit Demon class 2014 in New Wave Fabulism
Tantra Bensko's Online Writing Academy 4 years
Birmingham, Alabama school system guest teacher 2011
Kaleidescope program at LeBonneur children's hospital several months
Memphis State University 2 years
University of Iowa 2 years
UCLA X Writing Program 4 years -- current-- Intermediate Short Story Writing
Writers College 4 years -- Experimental Fiction
Alchemy Collective -- beginning monthly classes
Writers.com during 2015
Lit Demon class 2014 in New Wave Fabulism
Tantra Bensko's Online Writing Academy 4 years
Birmingham, Alabama school system guest teacher 2011
Kaleidescope program at LeBonneur children's hospital several months