Looking for book recommendations? To celebrate the end of the year, the MAYDAY editorial staff shares the books they read and revisited in 2021.
Featured Nonfiction
Murmurations (I): First Memory of Birds
by Heather Bartel
Is a family portrait still a family portrait when a family is missing the mother?
Made Easy
by Venus Noirre
“I was pimped out by an acquaintance when I was at my most vulnerable. It may come across I’m cavalier with this, but I’m not. I’ve just let the shame of it all go.”
The Boy Is Now an Obituary
by Alyse Bensel
What killed him has been excised from the obituary. It exists in the blank space along the margins. Because it is easier to say died than overdosed.
You Seem Really Lonely
by Sage Tyrtle
For two weeks I wish Marta dead. With every breath I take in. I am not proud of this.
GROCERY STORE ARTIST
by Joshua Gottlieb-Miller
Within our disorienting, indefinite pandemic, the lonesome invisibility of retail workers has become ironized by their initial hyper-visibility.
Persian Night
by Douglas Cole
She placed a cup of the hot elixir on the counter before me. On the surface of the cup little dragonfish swirled around like visual laughter. I felt my stomach tighten and my heart speed up. Here we go . . .
First Monsoon
by Nazanin Knudsen
10. Early Mornings The 5:00 AM train that goes through the Sixth Street underpass whistles in the distance. Shuffling the pillows, I try to find a position that offers some relief from the pressure in the back of my neck. I live in an apartment near the University of Arizona campus. As an only child […]
You’d Just Be Different, That’s All: Revisiting Catcher in the Rye in 2020
by Sam Rebelein
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know about is that crumby article I found a few years back. It was a really phony piece, in The Guardian or something and all, written by this very intellectual guy who says he re-reads Catcher in the Rye every […]
Being Fred
by Leslie Absher
Being Fred My Dad’s first CIA field assignment was in Athens, Greece. It was the late 1960s when my uncle Tom came to visit our family. He didn’t know his older brother was a spy then, though he suspected it. “One day your father and I were about to enter a store,” he told […]
