I love novellas. Small books that don’t weigh down a bag or cramp your arm when held upside down, a book that won’t give you a bloody nose if it falls on your face when you’re reading in bed, and a beautiful cover that you can look at and breathe in when you need a […]
Fiction
Our Small Faces by Jamie Moore Reviewed
The Book of Rusty
by Benjamin Drevlow
This story was selected as a finalist for the 2021 MAYDAY Fiction Prize. If anybody was ever gonna write the Book of Rusty which nobody was, nobody including not Rusty, but if they were they’d have to trace its origins all the way back to seventh grade. Language Farts class with Mrs. Susan Schmidt. As […]
So Much More by Marco Angelini
(Translated from Italian by Scott Belluz)
Lara is over at my apartment. I made her linguine with homemade pesto and fried zucchini blossoms because I know she likes them. We ate lunch in the kitchen then moved into the living room which is also my bedroom. It’s big so everything fits. I showed her the window frame I’d painted a creamy […]
Shapeless
by Haley Kennedy
This story was selected as the winner of the 2021 MAYDAY Fiction Prize Margo might be lost. She balances her iPhone on two free fingers, inspecting the street map. Under one arm she holds a repurposed Staples box filled with knickknacks she should have left at her desk. Under the other is a lacey […]
Lilly Dancyger Interview by Raki Kopernik: Jewish Women Writers
Lilly Dancyger is the author of Negative Space, a reported and illustrated memoir selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards. She is also the editor of Burn It Down, an anthology of essays on women’s anger. Find her on Twitter at @lillydancyger. This interview has been edited for brevity […]
An Institution More Suitable and Equipped
by Alissa Hattman
Friday, January 27, 2017 Dear Mr. and Mrs. Douglass-Saad, This is to advise you that pursuant to the provisions of Section 24 of the School Act and Administrative Procedure—Student Discipline and Expulsion—your son, Jean-Pierre (JP) Douglass-Saad, age six years, a student in Grade 1 at Thomas Jefferson Elementary, has been expelled due to conduct injurious […]
Life of the Party
by Meghan Beaudry
The windows are plastered with paper skulls. Black crepe streamers drape across the ceiling fans. The poured alcohol awaits — Reservoir Dog’s Grim Reaper, although you’d wanted absinthe. By any account, it’s going to be a killer party. Bethany pads onto the front porch and plops down on the chair beside you. The screen door […]
Savage Summer
by Cameron Shenassa
My mother always worked, so in summers she’d drop us at the head of the river, where we’d put our tubes in the water and float back into town, free to spend our days however we pleased. Sometimes we got out of the water, hauled our tubes up the bank, and bought orange sodas at […]
Interview with Rachel Swearingen, Author of How to Walk on Water and Other Stories
by Scott Mashlan
Rachel Swearingen is the author of How to Walk on Water and Other Stories, winner of the 2018 New American Fiction Prize (October 1, 2020). Her stories and essays have appeared in VICE, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, Off Assignment, Agni, AmericanShort Fiction, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2015 Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in Fiction, a […]
Dance, Ghosts, and the End of the World: An Interview with Emily St. John Mandel
by Nathan Winer
Emily St. John Mandel is a novelist originally from British Columbia. The author of five novels, her fourth, Station Eleven (2014), tells the story of life before and after a world-shattering pandemic, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner award, as well as the winner of the Arthur C. Clark […]
