About the Author

Nicole Rivas is the author of TENDER HOOF: STORIES (Thirty West Publishing, 2024) and the flash fiction chapbook A BRIGHT AND PLEADING DAGGER (Rose Metal Press, 2018). Her stories have been published in journals such as Longleaf Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and The Cincinnati Review, and her flash fiction has been anthologized in Best Microfiction (2019), The Best Small Fictions (2019), and W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction America (2023).

Reviews

#1 Nicole Rivas: Master Flash Fiction Author Everyone Should Read - by Meg Pokrass

Vol. 1 Brooklyn: Books of the Month: January 2024

“Tender Hoof is a gorgeous and haunting debut. Nicole Rivas has written a collection of chilling and gripping stories—almost like modern-day fairy tales—full of sentences delivered with the sharp precision of a knife. In prose rich with beautifully crafted memorable details, the specificity of the characters and what happens to them still leaves you unsettled by how they are just as easily anyone, everyone, and you. Death, ghosts, and fear hover over the world and yet tenderness, desire, and love do, too. There are moments of dread, uncertainty, hope, and wonder. Her storytelling voice is confident and measured while the stories themselves are breathless, gone in a flash, and linger long beyond the final words on the page. This is a book you will want to read more than once.” 

—Anna Vangala Jones, author of Turmeric & Sugar: Stories

“It’s hard to know what to expect from a collection of flash fiction—not the slow burn of a novel or the stylistic showcase of a traditional story collection —but there’s a line early in Rivas’ Tender Hoof about the Donner Party of all things that let us know their concerns for the project. I won’t ruin it, but it’s a quick bit of insight that is funny but dark, accurate but painful. My favorite flash collections are relentless, almost overwhelming a reader with speed, voice, and precision. Rivas is relentless—there’s not a sleeper among these—but she is also playful in her iterations. I’m thinking of the ice-cold sex story, the title piece about living furniture, the sort of fairy tale describing a restaurant in the dark woods, and the breadcrumb trail of diet pills to find one’s way home. These pieces are weird with smart intent, never boringly sentimental, and a clear announcement of Rivas’ craft and point of view.”

—Sean Ennis, author of Cunning, Baffling, Powerful and Chase Us: Stories