Author: Epiphany Ferrell

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Tonight is the last of a three-night performance of Epiphanies: performances of flash fiction. My flash fiction.

After the opening night performance, standing with my husband and friends at our favorite watering hole, the elation making me incoherent, I must have said “Wow,” at least 50 times. My face hurt from smiling.

The cast and directors: Back row, l to r: T Brown, Craig Gingrich-Philbrook, Epiphany Ferrell, Shelby Swafford, Mario Sanders, Christina Ivey. Front row, l to r: Paula Horton, Alicia Utecht, Sky Bartnick, Juno Blue, Elise Wheaton.

Let me describe this experience. Several weeks ago, I met my friend, Craig Gingrich-Philbrook, Professor of Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, to hand over a thumb drive with most of my published flash fiction—nearly a hundred stories, a jumble of word documents.

Craig presented these stories to a selected group of performance students—both undergraduate and graduate—and faculty. They chose stories to stage at SIU’s Marion Kleinau Theatre, a small stage best suited for intimate audiences and minimalist or experimental productions.

I arrived at the theater with my husband, singer-songwriter Tim Crosby, early. I was nervous, excited. Surrounded by a large group of friends, we sat second row center facing a black-floored, black-walled-and-curtained stage upon which rested a single prop—a simple chair/stair of black-painted wood.  

A graduate student introduced the night, and delivered the first performance. I was transfixed for that and the next 12 performance, 13 total.

Most were solos. One had two performers. The final performance included the whole cast of eight. By performance I mean a memorized reading that is also an acted interpretation of the story, making use of the stage but with only the prop of the chair/stair and another just like it.

They chose snarky stories and sad stories, stories that are darkly funny or tragicomic or wearily bitter. They infused each story with a multiplicity of emotion. One story was performed three times, which is an amazing way to understand the subtle differences in interpretation.

Around me, I heard my friends and audience reacting to my words and to their dramatic presentation. I felt seen. I felt my stories hitting home, doing what I wanted them to do, expressing what I wanted to say.

And, I heard my words in a whole new context, delivered sometimes the way I’d heard them in my head when I wrote them, and sometimes with a different shade of emotion that gave the story new meaning to me, its writer.

After the performance, talking with the cast, one of the words I heard most often from them was “fun.” They had fun with my stories! Can there be a better compliment than that?

My friends told me they had fun, too. And that they laughed, teared up, and were blown away by the performance.

I’m at a loss how to describe fully how this feels. I’m honored, obviously. It’s such a gift to have someone I respect as much as Craig ask to use my work in this way, to have a group of performance art professionals and students inhabit the stories, and to have my friends and members of the community come to experience it.

I have tried to come up with a philosophical statement about why I write. I struggle to explain it. Mostly, it’s something I have to do. I’m unhappy when not writing regularly, restless and snappy and bored. When I’m writing, even when it’s not going well, I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. Supposed to do why? I don’t know.

Early in my life I realized the emotional reaction I had to a story meant I shared something with the writer, something deep, personal and spiritual in a way—something that cut across time and geography. It’s one of the best feelings I know to read a story and to feel kinship with the creator, no matter what era in history or part of the world that person or people lived. I’ve wanted to be part of that timeless conversation since childhood, and as a writer, hope to do that.

This performance affirmed for me that I am doing it. That my words contributed to someone else’s artistic expression, and that the words separately and as part of the performance, touched people.

Thank you, Craig, and Shelby Swafford, Alicia Utecht, T Brown, Christine Ivey, Elise Wheaton, Sky Bartnick, Paula Horton, Mario Sanders, Juno Blue, and technical crew. You’ve given me a gift I will carry in my heart and soul forever.

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The SIU School of Communication Studies hosts Epiphanies: performances of flash fiction.

They are staging a selection of my stories!

This is one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me. I can’t wait to see new perspectives on my stories, and to see them staged and read in a performative environment!

If you are local to me, I really hope you can make it. February 6-8, performances at 7 p.m. in Marion Kleinau Theatre. (That’s upstairs from McLeod Theater, if you aren’t familiar.)

Thank you Craig Gingrich-Philbrook and Shelby Swafford — and the SIU Carbondale School of Communication Studies — for launching this project!

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Snow day! This is like a Michigan snow down here in Southern Illinois today. And a great change from the ice storm we had just a few days ago that knocked out our power for 75 hours. Just pure snow joy!

I’ve been waiting for a snowy day to make this reading video. The first take was good—but a snowflake on the lens made it blurry. It took me another half a dozen takes to get it right. As good as I can do, anyway.

The bit in this story about the vehicle crash is mostly true. It’s a story I heard in a town where I lived for a couple years. I wanted to write it into a bigger story but every attempt failed. And then one day I was enjoying a solo lunch at a café, half-heartedly eavesdropping as writers tend to do in such environments, and I heard a woman giving her friend several reasons she was reluctant to break up with her boyfriend even though she knew the relationship wasn’t working. Bingo.

This is filmed in a section of the Shawnee National Forest near my house.

Here’s a link to the story: https://sleetmagazine.com/selected/ferrell_v12n1.html

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I’ve been a calendar dork for a long time.

As a kid, I received a wall calendar illustrated by Rich Rudish and depicting famous horses in history. I loved that calendar—Alexander the Great’s Bucephalus, the famous Arabian Witez II, Joan of Arc’s charger that only she could tame…. I can conjure those images almost without trying. That calendar set a high standard for future wall calendars. The only wall calendar to come close to it, in fact, was a fine art calendar of unicorn art, featuring Susan Seddon-Boulet and others.

I don’t hang a wall calendar anymore—or, rarely. I still use a weekly planner, even though I also use the calendar function on my phone. Mostly it’s practical. I prefer to use one with witchy holidays, or illustrated pages, or sassy stickers. Or horses on facing pages.

My favorite part now isn’t revealing next month’s illustration. It’s that first moment of writing in perennial dates—anniversaries, birthdays. I love that moment of adding the first plans of the new year, especially the fun ones, like travel dates.

Inevitably, I make a mistake. I have to add a pen scribble or Sharpie line to my new calendar! It’s almost a relief when it happens. Whew! Got that over with. It’s a good reminder at the year’s inception that no plans, no matter how well laid, are immutable.

See you in the new year! Share your favorite calendar, if you’re dorky enough!

An image of a weekly planner with birthdays, events, and a mistake covered with a sticker and a scribble.

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Rather than change my list, I’m distilling it.

1. I will be more strategic in my fiction writing.

This means writing for specific open calls and target venues. My strategy in the past has been simply to write regularly. That, of course, is important. But now I’ll sharpen my focus. And keep a better writing calendar.

2. I will put my energy where it belongs, and strive not to waste it where it ultimately matters less.

I’m re-defining my perception of who I want to be—and though it may not appear so, it’s a big change.

Specifically, I am going to worry less about my day job. It will be a tremendous challenge for me. I’ve long defined myself by what I do for a living, in large part because I’ve been a professional writer (though not of fiction) for about 25 years and counting. 2024 was a rough year at work in some ways. I’ve fretted, fumed and ranted, felt overwhelmed by anxiety and struggled with resentment. I’ve lost sleep. I’ve worried myself sick. I need to shift my focus. I have plenty of professional pride wrapped up in my job, and that won’t change. But it’s my job, not my life.

Putting it another way: I wouldn’t give up having a horse for my job—but I have in order to pursue being an author. It’s time to make that sacrifice count. I need to focus my energy on  what’s important to my career long-term, and stop flinging myself at brick walls, however tempting they may be.

3. Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum

Walk more. Stretch more. Do yoga. Be present.

4. Keep up my dang website better! See ya here more often. 🙂

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At the end of September, my husband Tim and I traveled to my home state of Michigan to visit my siblings on my mother’s side, and to meet cousins on my father’s side. From there, we took a two-day jaunt to the Upper Peninsula for my first look at Lake Superior. And then home through Wisconsin, where I visited my sister and nieces on my father’s side.

These are long-lost family. I’m adopted. This is birth family I’ve found and been getting to know over the past several years. I’ll have plenty more to say on this subject!

For now, though, here’s a trail reading of my story Crossing Over, from Ghost Parachute magazine.

This story is one of those that went quickly once I started writing it. Though this story took a tragic turn, writing fast as I did with this story is a blast! The narrator’s voice came through loud and clear, and I followed along.

The reading is alongside the Cedar River near the Cedar River Natural Area, Bellaire, Michigan. We stayed at a phenomenal Air BnB near there. I hope to stay there again my next visit north.

Additional footage is from, in order: 12 Oaks Vineyard (Carlyle, Illinois); foot bridges over the Kaskaskia River in central Illinois; Rocky Bluff trail near Devil’s Kitchen Lake in Southern Illinois; Falls of Rough, Kentucky.

I hope you enjoy!

PS – Tell me about your favorite bridges!

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I don’t know how I missed posting this reading here! It hit social media in June…

Doodles is an old one. It appeared in a journal called Cooper Street Journal, which is gone now, I think. It was a journal out of Rutgers University.

I filmed this in segments during our train trip home from Tucson, Arizona. So, you’ll see train stations in Temple, Fort Worth, and Dallas, Texas, and footage during the train trip, and in Sabino Canyon, Arizona. It was very windy at some of the locations!

Overnight train travel is an experience! I’m glad we did it, and I’d do it again. But it ain’t the cheapest way to go. We got a sleeper car, which I highly recommend if you will be over night. Also, since your dinner’s are included—and access to the first class dining car—that helps a whole lot.

I’m not sure where the story came from. It’s about going home when you aren’t sure you belong there and have been away a long time. And it’s about how much things change. And how some memories we cherish are simply forgotten by others.

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I’ve got a story in The Horror Zine Magazine! The Horror Zine has plenty of street cred in the horror world. It’s got longevity and quality on its side, and editor Jeani Rector is well known for her contributions to the community, including encouraging new horror writers.

I’m continually enchanted by the idea of the veil between the worlds stretching, growing thin, allowing crossover from one world to the next. It’s the essence of fairy stories. For me, it’s part of what moves me to awe in the natural world. And it’s often something I weave into stories.

The idea for Like Furies came while I was waiting for my husband’s trio gig to start in Centralia, Illinois. They play in a courtyard between two older brick buildings. I was restless, and was walking around this block, then that one. We were on the edge of town, near railroad tracks. Within the same two block square, there was an abandoned building with tall grass and vine in the alley like a jungle, and also store fronts, a bank, park benches along the sidewalk, and a couple traffic lights. As I wandered around, I noticed a few feathers on the sidewalk. I almost always pick up feathers. A few feet further, more feathers, different kind, in good shape. As I walked, I picked up half a dozen nice feathers, and left quite a few on the sidewalk that were in poor shape, or clumped together as if torn out in a bunch.

And that got me thinking: Why are there so many feathers? A resident peregrine? Some larger cities have them to control the pigeon population. What if it was something else? Something sinister? That, in the way of small towns everywhere, no one would talk about? What if that person watching me pick up a feather didn’t think I was merely weird, but that I was breaking tabu?

I scribbled a few notes, and began writing the story the next day.

I thought about having someone send Tori to Black Creek as vengeance for an imagined slight. But as I wrote her character, it became clear she wouldn’t fall for that. She wouldn’t be a victim— she’d be more susceptible to grief. But not over a man.

Though I didn’t describe what she looks like in the story, I have a clear picture of her in my mind.

That’s the way it works for me. Sometimes characters are fully formed in my mind and they tell me what to do, being rather bossy about it. Other times, I have to tease it out. And sometimes I only know what they are all about until I’ve gotten it wrong a few times.

The story’s ending was a bit of a surprise for me. I had it in my mind up until Tori’s encounter with the source of the feathers in town. The rest was spontaneous. I love when that happens.

Print copy, with that outstanding cover art, here.