🖇️ Woman of the Hour—Fiction
Pub Day! Read a free preview on my debut short story collection!
I’m Claire Polders, author of Wander, Wonder, Write, and today my debut short story collection Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion will enter the world!
A girl changes into a fox in self-defense. An idealist imagines what her new leader should look like, using her pets as reference. Guerrilla gardeners at dawn are sowing life-saving hope. A traveler delights in tasting European chefs. And a cruel ritual for teenage women turns into a revolution.
The fifty stories in this collection will transport you from an Amsterdam canal to the Oaxacan coast, from a silt-streaked Venice to an imaginary world, from an Icelandic waterfall to a hall of mirrors.
You Can Order Woman of the Hour Now
Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion is available as paperback and e-book (and soon as audiobook via Tantor).
If you order Woman of the Hour directly from Vine Leaves Press, my publisher and I will benefit the most.
The flash fiction collection is also available on many different sites and can be ordered in nearly any bookstore. Here are some options:
Bookshop / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Target / Apple / Waterstones / BOL NL
Preview: Woman of the Hour—Flash Fiction
Would you like to read a preview before you buy a copy of my book? I got you covered: Please find the title story “Woman of the Hour” below.
Woman of the Hour
Sixty minutes before she steps in front of a speeding van, she blenders bird seeds with berries for her vegan twelve-year-old, who dirties their kitchen each Saturday for some type of raw bake-off but cannot get up early enough on school days to mix her own shake. As a mother, she practices patience. Her smile tempers yet never quite masks her discontent. She looks haunted by a tampon jingle, smelling her own rancid blood.
Fifty minutes before she loses her breath in a death-threat flash, she secretly dictates a dentist appointment into her husband’s calendar and sets up a reminder for seven days ahead. She should neither startle him with a sudden visit nor let him know about it for too long in advance. As a wife, she protects. If she lets his anxieties spin out of control, the whole household will suffer. There are limits to what their healthy diet can cure.
Forty minutes before the driver hits his brakes with the power of blind rage, she verifies whether her mother’s scheduled caregiver has checked in on time to drive her mother to the oncologist. As a daughter, she’s at a distance. In her early forties, when she herself experienced a cancer scare and filled bowls with vomit, she stopped trying to gain the love she had missed as a child. She’s a confident woman. If only because she refuses to be in a story in which readers see her flattened under a misery the weight of a truck.
Thirty minutes before small-town bystanders look up from their phones and applaud her, she sends an emoji-rich message to her bestie, who suffers from envy as though it were a chronic back pain. As a friend, she condones. Each time she meets with such a special person in her life, she feels as though she’s spreading a picnic blanket under a blossoming jasmine tree and is handed a life-prolonging elixir. The pleasure she derives from holding hands can be greater than from sex.
Twenty minutes before she spots the family of ducks crossing the street in a line, she calls her new team member with detailed instructions on how to prepare the brand-identity presentation later that day. Last but not least: The smell of fresh coffee is key. As an employee, she goes beyond the call of duty. Not in the hopes of advancing her career, but because she cannot bear to witness catastrophes.
Ten minutes before she bursts out laughing at the thought of being a brave woman for the sake of seven ducks, she unintentionally catches a vagrant’s eye and drops her loose change in a held-out hand. As a heroine, she is pathetic. Who has time for saving the world? Her father, apparently, who moved to Oaxaca at the age of seventy-three and became an activist for the Mixtecs. She turned the news of his departure over in her hands, like a sharp thing picked up from the grass. Is it true that she has his jaw?
At the time of her near death, she steps off the sidewalk into traffic, not seeking to shatter her bones, yet distracted by the unexpected image of herself as a broken vase, a woman in jagged pieces. The van screeches to a halt in a cliché she fails to notice. There’s the stink of burnt rubber, and a memory flickers, ghostlike. As a child, she was a theater talent and still whole. She would stand on the makeshift stage of their shoddy living room rug, performing a self-written play in a self-made costume, hair in a ponytail hidden beneath a wig, acting out all the parts and getting applauded by the merry adults, including her mother, for so convincingly being anyone but herself.
The story “Woman of the Hour” was originally published by Fractured Lit.
Thank you Tommy Dean!
It became the title story of the collection Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion by Claire Polders published by Vine Leaves Press today.
Early Praise for Woman of the Hour
Several writers I admire have said some very nice things about my book:
“The riveting characters in Woman of the Hour are full of desire, anger, regret, and darkness. Their fragmented lives are tough, but their grit inspires. This brilliant collection makes you love people again.”
— Grant Faulkner, author of The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story and executive producer on America’s Next Great Author”Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion is a brilliant and necessary collection for our times.”
— Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works“Claire Polders’ flash collection is an exquisite celebration of the whole, the real self, and a call to action for the girl, the woman, and the crone. ”
—Jolene McIlwain, author of NPR-Book-of-the-Year Sidle Creek.“In this brilliant, lyrical collection of flash, Claire Polders shines a kaleidoscopic light on the mystery of being human in a female body.”
— Thaisa Frank, author of Heidegger’s Glasses and Enchantment.“Each story in this collection is like a Godiva chocolate, dense and delicious: Dig in.”
—Sarah Freligh, author of Other Emergencies.
Want to support me but cannot buy my book?
I love helping writers create their art, but I cannot afford to buy every book that piques my interest.
Here are some things you can do for authors that won’t cost you any money:
Add their book to your to-read list on Goodreads, or better: Rate the book and write a favorable review
Request their book at your library
Borrow their book (from a library or friend) and review it on your blog or public site (such as BookBub)
Follow the author on Amazon and like their books
Share their book posts on social media
Like their book posts or leave a comment
Forward this email to your friends and family members
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Invite them to write a guest post on your platform
Interview them for a newsletter, podcast, or literary magazine
Encourage them by writing a kind note (private or public)
And, if you’re serious about writing a review, request a review copy from the author or publisher.
For more information, please visit my website www.clairepolders.com.
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Now, I’m going to celebrate my book along with the rest of the Peruvians in Lima. It’s their Independence Day (today & yesterday), here known as Fiestas Patrias.
Who says the fireworks are not for me?
All my best,
Claire
P.S. Flash fiction collections make excellent (birthday) gifts!
Congratulations 🎉🎈🎊🍾
Congratulations!