Escape Pod 326: Flash Fiction Special
Poppies and Chrome by Sylvia Hiven
Rabbi Aaron Meets Satan by Tim Lieder
Fine-Tuning the Universe by Merrie Haskell
Narrated by Mat Weller, author Richard E. Dansky, and Mur Lafferty
About the Authors
Merrie Haskell
Merrie Haskell was born in Michigan and grew up in North Carolina. She wrote her first story at the age of seven, and she walked dogs after school in order to buy her first typewriter.
Merrie returned north to attend the Residential College of the University of Michigan, where she earned a BA in biological anthropology. Her fiction has appeared in Nature, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Unplugged: The Web’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy: 2008 Download. She now lives in Saline, Michigan, with her husband and stepdaughter. Merrie works in a library with over seven million books, and she finds this to be just about the right number. She is also the author of The Princess Curse and Handbook for Dragon Slayers.
Tim Lieder
Tim Lieder began Dybbuk Press in order to self-publish but changed his mind halfway through the editing process of Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre. Through Dybbuk Press, he has published 9 titles including Rashi by Maurice Liber and King David & the Spiders from Mars. His fiction has been published in Big Pulp, Shock Totem and Lamplight.
Sylvia Anna Hiven
Sylvia Hiven was born in Sweden but lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia. Her fiction has appeared in over thirty-five publications, including PseudoPod, Flash Me Magazine, EscapePod, Everyday Fiction, and others. She edits the speculative fiction magazine Lingerfiction
About the Narrators
Richard E. Dansky
Richard E. Dansky is the author of several novels and a video game designer who works for Ubisoft.
Mat Weller
Mat Weller is the servant to a lovely family in eastern Pennsylvania. After his wife and kids go to sleep at night, he sometimes re-watches old episodes of X-Files on Netflix and other times retires to his basement booth where he records noises that get played on the Internet. Rumor has it he also makes delightful chocolate chip cookies.
Oh, and in October 2014, he beat Metroid II for the first time since 1991.
Mat had the honor of producing for Escape Pod from 2010 to 2016. He is also a graphic designer, an amateur voice actor, an amateur father, and he narrates a growing catalog of books for ACX.
Mur Lafferty
Mur Lafferty is the co-editor and sometime-host of Escape Pod.
She is an American podcaster and writer based in Durham, North Carolina. She is the host and creator of the podcasts I Should Be Writing and Ditch Diggers. Her books have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, and Scribe Awards. In the past decade she has been the co-founder/co-editor of PseudoPod, founding editor of Mothership Zeta, and the editor or co-editor of Escape Pod (where she is currently).
She is fond of Escape Artists, in other words.
Mur won the 2013 Astounding Award for Best New Writer (formerly the John W. Campbell Award), and the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Fancast for Ditch Diggers. She’s been nominated for numerous other awards and is always doing new things, so check her website for the latest.
