March 16, 2012

This one really isn’t what you might be thinking…on any level.

Iron Maiden, by Galen Sanford & 6’minutestory

Read by Xe Sands

Xe writes…

Been a long while since we had some flash fiction up in here, what with all the lovely poetry and sad letters and singing and dancing with lobsters…so let’s bring it back with a vengeance.

…and by that I mean that this one will leave you hungry for more, scratching your head thinking, ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? What happened?’ and that’s the best part about flash fiction (to me anyway) – the pieces that torment you with what/why/how/where/WHYISN’TTHEREMORE??

Love Galen’s pieces. Glad to bring another to audio.

Monlogue from Aclestis, by Euripides
Read by Diane Havens

Diane writes…

This is a monologue from the Euripides (480-406 B.C.) play “Alcestis”, in which Alcestis delivers her parting words to her husband, Admetus, and their children before she dies.

As a Theatre grad student, I studied and performed some classical theatre, including the great plays of Ancient Greece. Such grand roles for women — Medea, Antigone — and this rather minor one, Alcestis, in a play that bears her name. In Euripides’ play, Alcestis dies early on and then the story is more about Admetus, the husband for whom she gives up her life. This caught the imagination of author Katherine Beutner, and in fact, inspired her to write her beautiful debut novel “Alcestis” based on the myth, but makes several key departures from it — her book gives the story back to Alcestis and creates a multi-layered, complex and memorable character of her. I had the great pleasure of narrating that book, and had the opportunity to interview Ms. Beutner about it as well. Here’s some of what she had to say:

“I’m thrilled that you found Alcestis a compelling character to voice, because the question of “voice” was what inspired me to write the book. I knew the basic story of Alcestis, but I didn’t know the entire thing — I thought it concluded with her descent into the underworld after she chooses to die in her husband’s place. In fact, at the end of Euripides’ Alcestis, Heracles brings Alcestis back to her husband after three days, but she refuses to speak. Nobody seems particularly bothered by this. But I was bothered. I was reading the play during my lunch break at a part-time job the year after I graduated from college as a classics major, and I was, to put it bluntly, pissed. I decided to write a version of the story that followed Alcestis into the underworld, and to make Persephone, rather than Hades, the deity most interested in keeping her there.”