
Author Spotlight: Christopher Allen
Flash. It's what's for dinner. And lunch. And bus rides and coffee breaks. When I first took my editorial position at Contrary Magazine, editor Jeff McMahon had to wean me off of standard Paris Review-length 5,000-word stories. The compression of a story didn't diminish them. He argued that fact, stories could deepen, expand. As I worked through my first issue with him, I saw what he meant. Just as poetry puts pressure on each word to bring meaning to the page, flash gets to