new writers

Summer Reading 2026

Feature

SUMMER is officially here in a few days but weather-wise it’s already arrived, for most of us anyway. Which means it’s time for: Summer Reading! Sitting on a beach or veranda with your favorite book, or on your favorite literary site, plunging into adventure and literary experience while expanding your neuropathways hopefully by encountering talented new writers. Which we’re always on lookout for like scouts, watchdogs and detectives.

WE’VE ENCOUNTERED via this site a few exciting new talents the past several years, including the author of our newest feature. Julia Piehler, who’s penned, in addition to three new poems we’ve presented at our Fast Pop Lit forum, a great Creative Non-Fiction work, “Los Alamos: Manna.” Which we’re pleased to present to you today.

I had been taught that, if caught in quicksand, I should lie back on the surface, limbs outspread like a starfish, and wait, immobile, for my companions to fish me out. Flailing about would only cause more liquefaction. But I was alone.

News and Reviews: Reality, Talent, and Hype

book review

Here’s the link.

MEANWHILE, we’re adding yet more hype to the pop-lit world with a poem at Fast Pop Lit by Julia Piehler. We’ll be featuring in a week or two a very good creative non-fiction work by Julia. One of many new literary talents lurking under literature’s snoozy facade, waiting to be brought to the surface. Stay tuned!

Today’s Stressful World

Pop Lit Fiction

STRESS IS EVERYWHERE, and has been in this mad society at least since the pandemic. Move faster, take on more demands, growing to-do lists about cars kids pets schools jobs, keep up with everybody as our screens multiply and costs skyrocket, accompanied by brutalist redesigns and algorithmic advertisements, politicians becoming hysterical and neighbors catty while everywhere we turn is growing anxiety until we, everyone of us, wants to shout, “Enough!”

NO ONE has captured this aspect of the contemporary world better, in our opinion, than Elizabeth Ohga in our new feature short story, “Portrait of a Lady in Gold.” Or: life today. The writing is so spot-on perfect that instead of one excerpt here, as is our usual practice, we could give a dozen. Instead, click the link, read the story– plunge into the narrative– and discover it for yourself.

Penny used to have it under control. She was breaking the cycle. Then 2020 happened. Everyone acknowledged it was a bad time for working mothers, though Penny’s boss saying “we see you, moms, and how hard you’re working,” did not add hours of sleep to her nights or dollars to her bank account. It didn’t put food on the table or change Lulu’s diapers. And then the people in charge decided they were sick and tired of Covid – just completely over it – and deemed the pandemic over. Nothing to see here, folks, let’s get back to work and make the good old American dollar. Get vaccinated, or don’t. Wear a mask, or don’t. But we are not going to let a stupid virus upend our lives. Except for people like Penny, it already had.

Dystopian Fiction, Dystopian Life

Pop Lit Fiction

A NEW SHORT STORY ABOUT A.I.

Dystopian fiction has been around a long time– at least since Mary Shelley’s still timely 1818 novel Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. The difference between her world and ours is that we now find ourselves living in a full-on dystopia, in which we’re losing the distinction between what’s real and not-real, human and not-human. It’s likely to become worse, as tech moguls and venture capitalists are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI companies and AI devices– ever more dreamed-up money-grab gimmicks to separate the gullible from their bucks. After all, the AI wave needs to be monetized. Someone needs to pay for it. That targeted someone being YOU. Us. All of us.

ON THAT happy note we present a new short story about one such company and consumer: “Ghost In the Machine” by Andie Weber. It’s fiction. Sure it is.

We hope you like it!

C. Ryan: Yeah, now I’m speaking your language. And AfterLife is the hottest new word in profits. This isn’t just your average chatbot, it’s bigger, better, and way more lucrative—and with the projections our finance department has put together, I can assure you this money-making snowball isn’t going to stop rolling anytime soon.

Fiction at Fast Pop

Pop Lit Fiction

ONE THING we’re trying to do at Fast Pop Lit— a key part of the New Pop Lit project– in addition to using it to be quicker at posting new material, is to inject more color into today’s moribund literary scene. The “POP” in our title means we’re not just a literary site, but have been heavily influenced by other art forms, including music and painting.

WHICH MEANS in part posting work which jumps out at the reader like a painting– such as this piece by Perry Genovesi, “Sketch Rex.” Take a look at it and see what you think!

They want to don their blue newsboy cap, visit the Boulevard to watch the young people sitting on the benches downtown, smoking by the statue of the giant granite head. A cold thought like wet paper towel presses itself against their face and snakes out their eyes.

More and More Poetry

Poetry

Hello! Today we continue presenting poetry– it’s a summer season for poetry– the latest being “The Crow” by Ken Kakareka, exclusively at our new Fast Pop Lit site. Check it out.

THEN, within days, look for a special Sneak Preview– at the same special underground venue– of work from another amazing poet.

Think of a basement club where appear the world’s best new poets. . . .

New Poetry 2023

Poetry

OUR FIRST FEATURE of the new year is a good one– Four Prose Poems by talented Toronto musician and poet Tom Preisler. The poems are set in Toronto, at nighttime. They’re first of a two-part set of writing from Tom for New Pop Lit, the second set to appear in a few weeks.

What distinguishes Tom Preisler’s work from the crowd is its ability to convey atmosphere and mood. With a phrase or a word, the reader is put into the world, the moment. Simple yet evocative. “Do more with less!” we’re often told. Here’s a writer who does it. His edge is that he creates in more than one art form– which enhances the quality of both.

If today’s literary scene is to be transformed– we believe it will be– it will be through new writers like Tom Preisler.

Beyond the Boundaries

Pop Lit Fiction

THE APPEAL of science fiction is the idea of testing the outer limits of science, technology– and of the imagination. To stimulate questions of “What if?” and “What then?” At its best, sci-fi combines creativity of ideas with creativity of writing. Such is the case with our new fiction feature, “DEDCOM-204” by Courtenay Schembri Gray, one of the most talented young writers on today’s literary scene. We hope you enjoy her offering.

What is life but a series of little deaths? Those impactful, perhaps traumatic moments that take a part of us, all in preparation for our eventual big death—the one we don’t return from. I like to visit mine, from time to time; at the facility on the edge of town. Dad loves to remember his adulthood; the time before—when a firefly was a glowing bug, rather than a moment in your life preserved in a jar.

XXX

By the way, Ms. Gray also has a poem in our newest print publication, the ultra-collectible Fun Pop Poetry. Have you purchased your copy?

2021 Recap Part Two

Announcement

2021 FICTION-POETRY RECAP PART TWO

THE YEAR’S OVERVIEW CONTINUES

America versus the Nazi war machine at the Battle of the Bulge– “The Deserters.”

A stripper working at a dive bar– “West Columbus.”

A young couple surviving the pandemic– “People Ruin Everything.”

The trials of online dating– “Symmetry.”

A whirlpool of surprise and terror– “The Boiling Point of Placid Water.”

Reflections of an aging mind– “The Age of Insomnia.”

The queen of storms– “The Sea At Night.”

An unusual man drops from the sky– “Cloud Dreams.”

A would-be superhero appears– “Waiting for the Superhero.”

2021 Fiction-Poetry Recap

Announcement

2021 RECAP PART ONE

A mysterious party–
“The Names Divine.”

ARE fast food poems pop? Or art?
“The Jimmy Johns Poem Collection.”

Love and romance–
“Love Poetry/Prose from Tom Preisler.”

A vivid slice of old-fashioned Americana–
“Carnival Fun.”

A story which asks, “What would you do?”
“Sorry For Your Loss.”

What makes a person a celebrity? What turns them into a star?
“Fanboy.”

Poetry with energy and rhythm–
“Two Poems by Mather Schneider.”

A vibrant time when everything changed artistically–
“Soup Can.”

Pop culture experiences in the real world–
“Two Short Pop Pieces by Andrew Sacks.”

MORE TO COME!