14 CONSECUTIVE LIFE SENTENCES
by Carrie Berry

A few of our contributors were hanging out together in various states of dishabille and the conversation turned to comparing lengths (as they so often do).

Someone brought up Jonathan Coe's novel /The Rotters Club/ which contains a sentence with 13,955 words, surpassing the previously held record in English Literature (a 4,391 word sentence from Molly's soliloquy in Joyce's Ulysses).

Having nothing better to do, they decided to have a go themselves creating works contained in only one sentence. Nothing for the Guinness Book of World Records here (the total length of all the works is under 6,000 words) but they had fun, anyway.

I give you LIFE SENTENCES, an intriguing selection of flash fiction and poetry, each of which has been pronounced a solitary sentence by a jury of the author's peers.

And for good behavior, you also get some advice from our flash wrangler, Gary Cadwallader, a column on writing space by Gabriel Orgrease and a Book review by Tera and J. K. Mason.

Enjoy!

Carrie

NOTE 2024

You will note that this font is different from the rest of the online versions. It matches the font of the print version (visually maybe my favorite issue) in which it looks far more striking. The magnet button pictured below was created to be shipped with this issue and to future new subscribers.

The sonnet by William Wordsworth was one of several public domain works I had intended to give New Wings—a feature that I never had time to explore before iggy lopez took over as poet guide. It was a total fluke that it happened to be one continuous sentence.

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