"I was only five when a tiger bit off one of my hands. My mother filled a glove with sand and sewed it to my stump. Every year, she cut the seam with a miniature pair of sewing scissors and stitched on a new glove." So begins "Threads," the first story in this brief collection. The tension that exists in close relationships is mirrored here, whether the story's focus is a group of girls visiting a friend after an accident, a man chewing on gravel, or a formerly handfed Scarlet Macaw in a gilt birdcage in the corner of his owner's living room. Two Good Ears is the first mini-book of flash fiction by Leah Browning. Leah Browning is the author of Souvenirs from Another Life, a collection of stories published by Quiet Ocean Studio & Press; Two Good Ears and Loud Snow, a pair of flash fiction mini-books published by Silent Station Press; and When the Sun Comes Out After Three Days of Rain, a collection of poetry published by Kelsay Books. She is also the author of three short nonfiction books published by Capstone Press and six chapbooks of poetry and fiction. Browning's work has previously appeared in Four Way Review, Harpur Palate, Valparaiso Fiction Review, The Threepenny Review, Necessary Fiction, Waxwing, Flock, Contrary Magazine, Passages North, Watershed Review, Parhelion Literary Magazine, Newfound, The Forge Literary Magazine, Superstition Review, Santa Ana River Review, Thin Air Magazine, The Broadkill Review, Funicular Magazine, Ponder Review, Mojave River Review, The Stillwater Review, and elsewhere. Her fiction and poetry have appeared on materials from Broadsided Press and Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf, with audio and video recordings in The Poetry Storehouse, and in anthologies including The Doll Collection from Terrapin Books and Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence from White Pine Press. Browning's stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions, and the storySouth Million Writers Award. Before and After a Slice of Cake, her second full-length story collection, is forthcoming from Quiet Ocean Studio & Press. In addition to writing, Browning has served as editor of the Apple Valley Review, an online literary journal, since 2005. She is originally from New Mexico.
