Description
Winner of the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Prize
Selected by Lily Hoang
We think we know about Helen of Troy and Aphrodite. The tales told of them are numberless. One a demi-goddess, catalyst of wars, most beautiful woman in the world. The other the goddess of beauty herself. But do we know them, really? Even when forced into marriage, Aphrodite holds countless secrets, her body remains her own. Helen loves her maid, Esme, lost to her forever. She leaves for Troy for a different reason that Odysseus and his ilk would have you believe. In the stories of A Bead of Amber on Her Tongue, Helen and Aphrodite at last speak for themselves.
Playing and (shamelessly) clever, A Bead of Amber on Her Tongue brings mythology into the 21st century—or another time that might be considered the contemporary, by which I mean a writing that is buoyantly new and full of delights—when Homer learns all about feminism and the whole room laughs with Aeschylus’s new stand-up routine. Dear Millennials: Please hit refresh: now, now, here, now.
Lily Hoang, author of Changing
Review
About the Author
Excerpt
Jennifer Pullen received an MFA from Eastern Washington University and a PhD from Ohio University. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in the following journals and anthologies: Cleaver, Off the Coast, Phantom Drift Limited, Prick of the Spindle, Behind the Mask (Meerkat Press), Meat for Tea, F(r)iction, and Lunch Ticket. She is originally from Washington State, and lives in Ohio with her husband and an orange tabby named Widdershins. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Ohio Northern University.
from Aphrodite Plays the Shell Game
He kisses her and she lets him. He runs his hands through her hair and nuzzles between her breasts and she lets him. She can’t manage more than passivity. A keening wail fills her head. She wonders what happens to a goddess who acts against her nature. At the end she feels dampness on her neck, and she realizes that he’s crying. She lets him rest his head on her breasts and she strokes his hair which is straight and surprisingly soft. This moment will have to be another secret.
