This volume of The Conium Review features nine new stories from Emily Koon, Tamara K. Walker, Rita Bullwinkel, Marina Petrova, Kayla Pongrac, Ingrid Jendrzejewski, Zach Powers, and Theodora Ziolkowski. The pieces include a mix of flash fiction and short stories, each with a penchant for innovative characterization, bizarre settings, and other weirdness. You’ll discover a dictator in a jar, a modernized fairy tale, a person living as a Tinseltown extra, and more.

This issue includes The People Who Live in the Sears, by Emily Koon, winner of of The Conium Review’s 2015 Innovative Short Fiction Contest. The contest was judged by Amelia Gray, author of Gutshot, THREATS, Museum of the Weird, and AM/PM. Amelia called Emily’s story a little George Saunders, a little Don Barthelme, but best of all a lot of its own thing, the neon Jazzercize glory of the 80s going up like the asbestos-fueled fire it features.