The Clarity of Hunger
A debut collection
of flash fiction
Published by word west press, 2021
Economy of language is this author’s superpower, and the book’s magic is often in what’s left unsaid.
Amy Lyons, Necessary Fiction
Characters in The Clarity of Hunger may long for different sorts of lives, but they also know that even micro-moments have meaning. . . [Pappas’s] flash pieces reveal that pivotal change so often stems from small beginnings, from the first scent of lavender soap to the photographed eyelash of a favorite correspondent.
Dena Soffer, Colorado Review
This is a sharp, wise, aching beauty of a collection . . . These stories are daring, daunting, desire-filled. Pappas brings tremendous skill and range to this captivating debut, landing it with truly one of the most beautiful and profound flash pieces I have ever read.
Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works
Cheryl Pappas's The Clarity of Hunger plants astonishment in soil so dark and so rich, it grows as large and bright and dangerous as the very first apple. Reading Pappas's stories is to take a bite and to suddenly know the unknowable so intimately it's like you just took a bite out of your very own heart. If I could, I'd eat these stories all day and then ask for more.
Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Happily and Wild Milk