Woman of the Hour Received an Enthusiastic Response

My debut flash fiction collection Woman of the Hour received an enthusiastic response.

SmokeLong Quarterly published a review by Marcus Tan.

“In her flash fiction ‘Bleeding Girls Initiation Ritual,’ Claire Polders shows us the resilience of the collective in a deft exploration of patriarchal structures and symbols. She never shies away from the lyrical, instead harnessing musicality to create evocative, memorable images: ‘We dance around the fire, ashen hands in the air, ready to accept the power that is naturally ours.’ Authority and submission jostle for space and at the end, but what lingers in my mind is the violence expressed as a necessary tool to escape the mechanism of oppression: ‘His back carves out a pit that fits his body like a grave. We refuse to grant him a last wish. We close the grave.’ In her debut collection Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion [Vine Leaves Press, July 2025], Polders reveals she is not afraid of vulnerability. Comprising fifty distilled stories, each no longer than three pages, Polders’ collection celebrates the vivacity of womanhood.”

–> Read the rest of the review “Defiance, Desire, and Transformation,” on the SmokeLong Quarterly site.

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Vestal Review also published a review, this one by Lucy Zhang.

“Brave yet cowardly. Confident yet powerless. Gentle yet violent. The characters in Claire Polders’s Woman of the Hour embody contradictions that cut like blades, exposing the sharp dichotomies of womanhood. Across fifty flash fictions, Polders moves from dystopian landscapes where girls must relinquish their dreams, to the intimate crisis of a surgeon mother questioning her ambitions. Each piece introduces its own ‘woman of the hour’—a figure simultaneously marginalized and centered, a paradox that underscores the collection’s irony and force.”

—> Read the rest of the review on the Vestal Review website.

Thank you, Marcus Tan, Lucy Zhang, and editors involved!

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Meanwhile on Goodreads, readers are leaving their positive comments as well.

Thank you all!