RADIO WATER is Francine Witte's latest collection of flash fiction stories. The title story was recently featured in the most recent WW Norton anthology, Flash Fiction America (2023.) This story, like many others in the collection deal with Witte's recurring theme of family in the process of breakdown. Other themes are romance, growing up, and the environment. The stories are all under 1000 words, and are told with Witte's signature mix of quirk and poetic style. These are short, short stories that have a novel's worth of emotion.
"Francine Witte's stories are explosive little treasures I pull out whenever I want to feel something new. In RADIO WATER, Witte dives into the murky waters of her characters, women and children who have been lied to, used, and left to their own abandonments, but their suffering is never dull and never without hope. Witte's prose is alluring, studded with apt metaphors for life and love, and heartbreak. You'll be moved by this new collection."-Tommy Dean, Author of Hollows
"Somewhere there is a wild and strange and lovelorn world where Francine Witte's characters rub shoulders, howl in pain and heartbreak, and sometimes commit murder as in her brilliant story, "Cross Country." And we're there for them. Yes, all of them. The plot twists in RADIO WATER flow as easily as water running down a stream, a sewer, a throat, and the details never snag on maudlin outcomes or unearned despair. RADIO WATER is alive, dazzling and dangerous."-Pamela Painter, author of Fabrications: New and Selected Stories
"Sometimes, a subject seems so shopworn that surely another example can't work, but Francine Witte, throughout RADIO WATER, makes magic by doing just that. The disappointing husband, the disillusioned wife, the unfaithful father, selfish men in general-that list gathers expectations that Francine Witte sweeps away with surprising imagery, vivid language, and characters who engage us before a few sentences are complete. Often, they make us smile even as we become angry. In other words, Francine Witte knows her craft. These stories immediately immerse us in
image and scene. They stir empathy without being sentimental. Within a few hundred words, we care. RADIO WATER has been a pleasure to read."-Gary Fincke, author of The Corridors of Longing and co-editor of Best Microfiction
