Jan Bowman’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications including: Roanoke Review (Fiction Award Winner), Short Story America, KYSO Flash Anthology, Uncertain Promise Anthology, Off the Rocks GLBT Anthology, Big Muddy, Evening Street Review, Broadkill Review, and others. Her stories have been among finalists in a number of contests, including honorable mentions from Glimmer Train, Danahy Fiction Prize, So-To-Speak Contest, Phoebe Contest, Short Story America, Broad River Review RASH Awards among others, including recent publications in Gargoyle and Trajectory.
She is working on a flash fiction collection and another story collection, Life Boat Drills: Survival Stories, is also under construction. She has begun working on a novel based on the last story in her first published collection, After the Rains.
Learn more at: www.janbowmanwriter.com
Read Flight Path & Other Stories on Google Books Flight Path & Other Stories available on Kindle Read Flight Path & Other Stories on scribd or read below
The stories in Flight Path & Other Stories reveal the power of kindness. In difficult moments of human contact, explored from childhood through old age, this collection provides a window into the kindness all people seek in moments of sorrow. In her poem Kindness, Naomi Shihab Nye writes that when you know sorrow as “the other deepest thing . . . then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.” from – “Kindness” in Words Under The Words: Selected Poems (1995) by Naomi Shihab Nye.
The dynamic mix of characters in these stories, know much about sorrow. They know it in the burden of a wife looking after her war-damaged husband and the son who confronts her more than 35 years after she abandons them. They know it in the struggle to hide from violence of the world, even though violence finds them. But they do know kindness, too. They know it in the unspoken understanding between a young man and his elderly aunt in the aftermath of a violent murder. They know it in small gestures between friends, and even strangers, after a sudden death, as well as through the unexpected connections found on the other end of the phone or a shared meal.
What others are saying:
For years I’ve been reading, admiring, and learning from Jan Bowman’s short stories. Her stories explore what we mean to one another, what is discovered, often only in moments of hardship and duress. These stories tread and plummet over rough terrain. That they do so with unflinching candor and searing vision is one reason to read them. The characters, each so distinct and nuanced that together they form a community, will be forever etched onto your memory. But the reason I keep returning to them? It’s the hope they provide, the unexpected paths they suggest, consoling me when I feel lost by enlarging and enriching what it means to be human. —Daniel Mueller, author of How Animals Mate and Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey
Jan Bowman’s short stories amaze with their insight and attention to the strange forms beauty and sadness assume, the way these qualities twist themselves into grace notes of the human experience. Her collection gives readers glimpses into the hearts of characters whose worlds are both familiar and surprising, leaving indelible impressions about life’s difficult and profound loveliness. —Michelle Brooks, author of Make Yourself Small and Dead Girl, Live Boy
These are heartfelt, rich, deeply intimate stories that unabatedly evoke and explore the vast range of human emotion. A wonderful and resonant collection. —Fred Leebron, author of the novels Out West, Six Figures, and In the Middle of All This
Read fiction Kindness 38 from Evening Street Review, NUMBER 12, Spring 2015
Order Individual Review Copies
All orders may also be sent to:
Evening Street Review, 2881 Wright ST, Sacramento, CA 95821
Both personal check or money order are acceptable.
Copyright © 2022 Evening Street Press. All rights reserved. Website designed by plentyofpixles.com