Little Fortified Stories by Barbara Black

Can you tell a story in a few lines? Yes, it’s possible — but can you make a book’s worth of them? This is what Barbara Black is trying to do in her collection, Little Fortified Stories. Originally inspired a few glasses of port in Lisbon, Black’s stories are little snippets, divided into multiple sections: “Distillations,” which is further subdivided into types of spirit; “The Unseen,” “Visual Provocations,” “Ancestral Fabrications,” “Disorientations,” and “Fado.” The last is a collection of numbered stories based on the Portuguese music of the same name, while “Visual Provocations” all appear to based on various pictures, described in words above the story.

There’s a lot of experimentation in Little Fortified Stories, and a lot of sharp commentary in these sparse pages. In “A Model Wife,” a former department store model sits perfectly still as her husband pontificates about his philosophical theories at her. In “Crgizl,” a man struggles with his experimental tongue transplant. In “Ink in a Dye Bath,” a daughter is used to experiment with the world of colour by her father. There is truly everything in these stories, running from strange to funny to tragic.

Black blurs the line between prose and poetry in many of these flash stories, letting the spaces tell stories, and letting verse slide in to make more lyrical moments. She also loads her stories with references to other pieces of art; I kept my phone near by to set down the book and catch what she was talking about. This is a book very firmly situated in conversation with the world around it. Some stories were more successful at marrying the world outside its pages with the scant lines afforded to each tale.

There’s a lot of experimentation in Little Fortified Stories, and a lot of sharp commentary in these sparse pages … Black shows great breadth as a writer and artist in these pages.

I very much liked the concept of Little Fortified Stories, with whole lives documented in a sentence, but was surprised that I had sections I was much more partial to than others — I felt some inspirations (the photos of “Visual Provocations”) worked as inspiration more cohesively than others (the sections named after types of liquor). But Black shows great breadth as a writer and artist in these pages, and the bold daring of Little Fortified Stories is impressive.

Barbara Black writes short and flash fiction, poetry and libretti. Black’s writing appears in The Cincinnati Review, Geist, The Hong Kong Review, Prairie Fire, and CV2, and in anthologies, including Bath Flash Fiction Award 2021, and Hologram: Homage to P.K. Page. Achievements include: Fiction Finalist, 2020 National Magazine Awards; Nominated for the 2019 Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize; Winner, 2017 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition; Winner, Federation of BC Writers Contests (Prose Poem) 2018 and (Flash Fiction) 2021/2022; and Shortlisted for the 2023 Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award. She recently won First Prize in The Plaza Prizes Microfiction Contest 2023 and also placed Second in the Flash Fiction Category. She is the author of Music from a Strange Planet (Caitlin Press, 2021), which was the winner of the 2023 Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society Award for Fiction, and a finalist for the 2023 International Book Awards, the 2023 Canadian Book Club Award and the 2021 Miramichi Reader‘s Very Best Book Awards. She lives in Victoria, BC, where she gardens and rides her trusty Triumph motorcycle.

Publisher: Caitlin Press (May 17, 2024)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 180 pages
ISBN: 9781773861401

Alison Manley

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Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.