I Have Not Considered Consequences: Short Stories

Sherrie Flick is the author of the short story collections, I Have Not Considered Consequences, Thank Your Lucky Stars, and Whiskey, Etc. (all published by Autumn House Press), the novel Reconsidering Happiness (University of Nebraska Press), and the essay collection Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist (University of Nebraska Press). Whiskey, Etc. was the winner of the Foreword INDIES bronze prize and named one of Entropy’s Best Fiction Books of 2016. A story from Thank Your Lucky Stars was performed at Symphony Space and aired on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She served as coeditor of the anthology Flash Fiction America (W. W. Norton) with James Thomas and John Dufresne and was series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018 with guest editor Aimee Bender. She is the recipient of a 2023 Creative Development Award from The Heinz Endowments and a Writing Pittsburgh fellowship from The Creative Nonfiction Foundation. She lives in Pittsburgh where she is a senior lecturer at Chatham University and a member of Shiftworks’ Creative Corps.

“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"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 "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"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 'beartender' 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