About the Book

The new flash fiction collection by Sherrie Flick, coeditor of Flash Fiction America and author of Thank Your Lucky Stars and Whiskey, Etc., a Foreword INDIES bronze prize for best story collection.

I Have Not Considered Consequences delves into the complexities of grief, desire, and a peculiar intersection between humans and bears. Flick’s evocative and thought-provoking stories follow characters like Bobby, a local home inspector who zips into a bear suit on his daily rounds, and a Gen-X couple, Matty and Trudy, navigating the ups and downs of their adult lives, from a dead fish named Patti Smith to dashed dreams of indie rock stardom. Women wander through small-town streets as they ponder love, allegiance, and Edith Wharton.

In Flick’s world, bears don’t just roam the wild—they play basketball, dance, and even work as midlevel business professionals. Through this memorable cast of characters, Flick reveals intriguing secrets about humanity and yearning with her signature blend of stark honesty and humor.

Hear Sherrie on the “Listen & Be Heard” Radio Show

Praise for I Have Not Considered . . . 

Featured in Electric Lit‘s “15 Small Press Books You Should Be Reading This Summer”

It’s this quiet yearning that defines I Have Not Considered Consequences and so much of the Generation X experience, always skeptical and often keeping life at an ironic distance, but still hoping not to have lost the secret of joy.
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Sherrie Flick has distinguished herself as one of the foremost voices in flash fiction. Flick’s latest collection, I Have Not Considered Consequences, may be her most powerful work yet.
—Rain Taxi

Flick’s characters know they need something, but aren’t always sure what it is. A case study of the emotional impact possible in the short form.
—Electric Lit

Flick’s well-drawn characters—bear and human alike—are easy to care about, to root for and remember. Her humor and light but deft touch infuse this collection with the stuff of life.
—Necessary Fiction

…the brevity of her fiction only serves to astonish the reader further when the largesse of depth and nuance is experienced in story after story no matter the length.
—Pittsburgh Magazine

Such brightness and humor in these stories—they made me laugh and each one moved with its own joyful rhythm.
—Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade

Sherrie Flick is an assassin. Book after book she has nimbly navigated the nighttime rooftops of our lives to sneak in and reveal to us our most private selves, and I Have Not Considered Consequences is her finest yet. This is electric, knife-sharp fiction that isn’t afraid to bust open the armor and the costumes we wear every day. Just let go, trust this fierce, starlit voice.
—Paul Yoon, author of The Hive and the Honey

“If she just cooked for him and unplugged everything, if they lived in complete silence, it would be fine. They would be happy forever.” Sherrie Flick’s third collection of stories, I Have Not Considered Consequences, tests this premise with great wit and a big dollop of generosity. A wily bear, a sometime “bartender” with piano-playing expertise whose brothers “are all off in Alaska fishing” joyfully interrupts with his own luminescent stories. After all, “who’s going to second-guess a bear at happy hour?” Read it.
—Terese Svoboda, author of The Long Swim 

Sherrie Flick’s I Have Not Considered Consequences reaffirms her mastery of the short story form. Her new collection is expansive in its scope, filled with quirky characters reconciling past with present, or present with future. In “Chlorophyll and Oxidation,” the first-person narrator reflects on her past in Italy when “the future is of no consequence,” and she reminisces with one of the men she traveled with those years ago when she was “feral . . . I was a bear then.”
—Linda Kass, founder and owner of Gramercy Books

Sherrie Flick is the 2025 McGee Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at Davidson College. She received a 2023 Creative Development Grant from the Heinz Endowments and a Writing Pittsburgh fellowship from the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. She served as co-editor for the Norton anthology Flash Fiction America and series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018 (Braddock Avenue Books). Her third story […]

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