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)
Category: Fiction
BIRTH ACT (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)
SANDSTORMS (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)
SAXOPHONE LUNG EXPLODES (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)
EXPOSURE (an excerpt)
BY JACOB M. APPEL Wednesdays and Saturdays are my days off at the pharmacy, but Saturdays my wife is off too, so I do my flashing on Wednesday afternoons. In the mornings, I have my weekly rap session with Dr. Quince-Martin. She rents space on a corridor down by the waterfront—opposite a urologist named Littlecock—and, … Continue reading EXPOSURE (an excerpt)
THE WORLD’S SMALLEST WOMAN
BY MEGAN HARLAN The World’s Smallest Woman has her own stage. People pay two dollars to approach the elevated trailer, then peer over a chain-link fence into the impromptu living room where Thea spends every other summer week. Thea trades off with Charmaine, another World’s Smallest Woman who is, in fact, a half-inch shorter than … Continue reading THE WORLD’S SMALLEST WOMAN
EVERYONE HAS A SNAKE STORY
BY SEAN ADEN LOVELACE One time a snake fell into my canoe. Right out of a bush. This was on the Spring River, in central Arkansas. I believe the snake was an Eastern Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula getula), or possibly a Queen Snake (Regina septemvittata), though I’m no professional herpetologist. Well, my fellow canoeist—also my little … Continue reading EVERYONE HAS A SNAKE STORY
NO ONE IN THE LIBRARY IS READING
BY MARIE POTOCZNY There are mice in the library, and the teenagers are having sex in the reference collection. The junior high boys are expressing their constitutional rights to look at pornography, and the girls are shredding the magnetic strips out of back issues of Vogue and People to steal for their bedroom walls. The … Continue reading NO ONE IN THE LIBRARY IS READING
Is This Normal?: An Interview with Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby, a New York Times bestselling author, has written four novels: High Fidelity, About a Boy, How to Be Good, and most recently A Long Way Down. He also wrote the memoir Fever Pitch, and edited and contributed to the story collection Speaking With the Angel. Several of his New Yorkeressays on pop music … Continue reading Is This Normal?: An Interview with Nick Hornby
BIOGRAPHY OF YOUR HUSBAND
BY KELCEY PARKER Biography of Your Husband takes you deep inside the illicit world of your husband’s affairs, bringing them to life in a way your mind has never fully confronted or imagined. Though you have often suspected him of infidelity, this is the first time one of his lovers has made a public claim … Continue reading BIOGRAPHY OF YOUR HUSBAND
