In Survival Skills, Elizabeth Rosen’s richly varied chapbook of flash fiction and short stories, characters push and pull against each other, flee, and do whatever it takes to get by. Two sisters—one who survived abuse in the family—pack up their deceased parents’ home and decide if there’s anything left worth keeping. A high school senior smokes a joint on the dock with his younger brother and the two young men lament their uncertain futures. In the title story, a woman seeks casual sex in order to survive the grief and uncertainty caused by her husband’s debilitating stroke. Beloved pets die, bodies bruise, and nobody makes it out unscathed. In these seven stories—often surprising, sometimes harrowing, but always rendered in Elizabeth Rosen’s confident, exacting prose—we’re reminded of what it means to be human.

Elizabeth Rosen is a former Nickelodeon TV writer and a current short story writer with a love of ghost-hunting shows. She is a native New Orleanian, and a transplant to small-town Pennsylvania. She still wants her MTV. Read more of her writing at here.