These are the wild days. We girls grow our hair long and insouciant like horsetails. We don’t think about boys. We don’t dress for them or take pictures for them or worry about what they’re thinking. Someday we’re supposed to submit to them, but not now. For now, they’re just boys. They’re not God. For now, we run with them.
Mom is taking me to a new church to be prayed over. Ordinarily, we’re not supposed to go to non-fundamentalist churches. . . .
Selected by Longform as a Fiction Pick of the Week.
I swallowed the whale before it could swallow me. It’s sitting in my belly now, asleep with one eye open and watchful. . . .
Nominated by Jellyfish Review editors for the Best Microfiction anthology.
Because we were Christian girls from fundamentalist churches, we wore our dads’ old, floppy t-shirts to the pool at our co-ed Christian camp.
Available on Kindle.
Included in Bartleby Snopes, Issue 11 as a staff selection.
Laurie never used anything she learned in home ec until she dumped Neil. Now she’s sewed a voodoo doll—back stitch, overcast stitch, running stitch. Two days ago she cut up Neil’s gray Old Navy hoodie that he gave her after the homecoming dance . . .
Reprinted Eunoia Review ⟶
Nominated by Gargoyle editors for a Pushcart Prize.
A rusted mess of barbed wire nearly stripped Debbie of her torso in her first and only car accident.
Selected by BookPeople as a recommended weekend read.
“Virgie Townsend’s Flash Friday on the Tin House blog shows the power of a very few well-chosen words.” — Rob Spillman, Tin House editor.
Michael heard once that the stars used to be so close and bright that his ancestors could see the shape of a spoon hanging in the sky. On nights like this one, when he’s walking home from work with his nose buried in his coat, he looks up and tries to find that mythological constellation. He never does—his eyes are too weak and the stars are too distant.
First story in series of flash fiction pieces inspired by the three primary cosmological hypotheses on the ultimate fate of the universe.
Selected by SmokeLong Quarterly editors for inclusion in SmokeLong Quarterly: The Best of the First Ten Years.
Marcella’s foot bounces forth and back, forth and back, as she unlearns middle school math. With her right hand, she unscrawls her name– the curling ‘c’ and looping ‘ls’– from the desk, and then sweeps her red hair out from behind her ear.
Second story in series of flash fiction pieces inspired by the three primary cosmological hypotheses on the ultimate fate of the universe.
Selected by Pif editors for inclusion in Best of Pif, Volume One.
Bethany’s little sister asks for an omelet. From beneath her pile of down and crocheted blankets, Gloria requests eggs with cheese, chorizo, and potatoes. She lifts her bloated hands, holds them seven inches apart, and says, “Make it this big.”
Final story in series of flash fiction pieces inspired by the three primary cosmological hypotheses on the ultimate fate of the universe.
Nominated by WhiskeyPaper editors for Best Small Fictions of 2015.
I am hunting you, Elisabeth. I pack a small bag and leave home before the sun’s up. I go down to the lake where we swam as children and perch nibbled our toes, mistaking them for stout worms. I go back to the field where we found you, take off my gloves, and trace your imprint in the snow.
Your mother called me after you went missing, asking if I knew anything they should know. There aren’t a lot of places to hide in Victorsville, and she was worried because no one had seen you since the night before.
Voted by readers as one of Every Day Fiction’s top 10 stories of 2011.
The Good Book Podcast interviewed Virgie about her short story collection on Christian fundamentalist girlhood and her own upbringing as an independent fundamental Baptist. Listen to the podcast online.
Virgie and her husband, Ryan, were interviewed by WomensHealth about being an interfaith couple.
Mr. Bear’s Violet Hour Saloon featured Virgie’s story “The Freeze.”
Virgie was a guest reader for The Inner Loop reading series’ one-year anniversary party.
Virgie read at the book launch of SmokeLong Quarterly: The Best of the First Ten Years, which features her story “The Freeze.”
SmokeLong Quarterly interviewed Virgie about her story “The Freeze.”
Every Day Fiction’s podcast featured Virgie’s story “Seventeen,” read by Folly Blaine.