BY JIM DANIELS Many readers of Sycamore Review are also writers. So we wanted to pose a few craft questions to contributor Jim Ray Daniels that might illuminate his process and techniques when writing his heartbreaking story “Candy Necklace” which can be read in its entirety in Issue 23.1-Winter/Spring 2011. Shelley bit another hard, tasteless … Continue reading Candy Necklace: An Excerpt and Author Response
BY SUSAN FRITH Many readers of Sycamore Review are also writers. So we wanted to pose a few craft questions to Susan Frith that might illuminate her process and techniques when writing her beautiful story “Your Guide to Painting with Radium” which can be read in its entirety in Issue 23.1-Winter/Spring 2011. First, consider your … Continue reading Your Guide to Painting With Radium: An Excerpt and Craft Response
BY GREG SCHUTZ We are at the tip of the thumb of Michigan. The sky threatens sun, so John has reluctantly left the water and run into town for groceries. His waders, latex and neoprene, hang in the mudroom. They smell sourly of rubber and sweat and still hold the shape of his legs. I … Continue reading You are the Greatest Lake (an excerpt)
BY CONOR BROUGHAN Sycamore Review is honored to publish “Last Words,” a new story by Edith Pearlman, in our forthcoming Winter/Spring 2011 issue. On January 11th, Lookout Books published a volume of her new and selected stories which we review below. Be sure to check back for an interview with Edith Pearlman at the end of … Continue reading Discovery as a Lifetime Habit: Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision
BY BROCK CLARKE Rupert goes first. Rupert’s real name is Shamequa, but we call her Rupert because one of the things we do is give black women the names of white men. We also give white women the names of Asian men, and young Hispanic men the names of old white women. And so on. … Continue reading PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT LIKE US (an excerpt)
BY ADAM PRINCE The distance from Tempe, Arizona to Newport Beach, California is 379 miles. At sixty miles an hour along the 10 freeway, it has taken Ted Asmund six hours and twenty minutes to get here. He has just crossed the bridge to the island and is parallel parking now. He checks his mirrors, … Continue reading ISLAND OF THE LOST BOYS (an excerpt)
BY PAULA TREICK DeBOARD Veronica saw it just before it happened, saw it and knew. She leaned across the sink and slapped the window with a soapy hand, smack, smack and scream. Her cry alerted the sisters and sisters-in-law who had been scraping plates and wrapping up the leftover tamales, the sticky-faced children eluding rough … Continue reading CASUALTIES (an excerpt)
BY RACHEL FUREY In front of her sixth grade class, Riley acts out her own birth. Mother’s Day is this weekend and this is supposed to be a simple speech – something with pleasant platitudes about her mother’s kind acts. Things like baking cookies and making dresses and teaching her how to catch fireflies. But … Continue reading BIRTH ACT (an excerpt)
BY KRISTEN-PAIGE MADONIA The week after I told my mother about my pregnancy, my best friend Emmy found out her dad was being sent to Iraq. Like a lot of the dads in Morgantown, West Virginia, he enlisted as a reservist for drill pay, and that October, when their infantry unit was activated, over a … Continue reading SANDSTORMS (an excerpt)
BY MATTHEW SIMMONS My dad is standing in front of a line of life-sized, clay copies of my dear, dead mother. They are in the garage, standing at something like parade rest, tipped back on their ankles, stiff bodies against the wall. I’m hidden outside the door, and he’s choosing which one he is going … Continue reading SAXOPHONE LUNG EXPLODES (an excerpt)
