The Risk of Forgetting Why
By Sean Collard • There’s a risk in learning how to write well: the danger of forgetting why you started. I worry that someday I’ll become so polished, so precise, that I’ll lose the very thing that made my…
Blog
Grandfather2 by Greg Hrbek
Current Life Situation: Lucrative Work-Assignment, Stable Marriage-Union, Model Son. After daily work-duty, take Municipal Transporter to Metro-Sector T—Genome Modification Center—and receive Target Sequence Update. Then hurry home. Find Model Son (name Theo) at study-station, solving math problem concerning volume…
The Orphanage by Waltrudis Buck
Nothing hangs together. There are big holes in the daughter’s memory. She cannot fathom the passage of time. Half a century ago when she was ten, sixty was an old woman. She does not think of herself that way.…
The Confidante by Mehdi M. Kashani
By the time Hamid learns they’ll have a guest, it’s a done deal. Kathy has this habit of inviting people over for beer on a whim, but having someone—a man, no less—stay for a whole week without consulting him?…
Cliff Notes for Seasons by Julie Marie Wade
We haven’t seen her in weeks, our neighbor with white hair that tufts and spumes, not a trace of color in it, not even a sliver of gray. We never learned her name, but we noticed—the way you notice…
Interview: Ashley Whitaker
In Ashley Whitaker’s hilarious, satirical, and at times devastating debut novel, Bitter Texas Honey, we follow Joan, a recent college graduate with an Adderall problem who wants nothing more than to be a writer. Her biggest obstacle? She’s plagued…
Hybrid Interview: Karen Babine
Essay by Abby Manzella • In Karen Babine’s latest memoir, The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo (Milkweed 2025), the author preps her Scamp camper and drives from her home in Minnesota to the Acadian coast of…
Interview: Shayne Terry
On an early spring day in Flatbush, I sat down with my friend and neighbor, Shayne Terry. Our five-year-olds went out with their fathers while we talked about Terry’s debut book, Leave: A Postpartum Account, which came out this…
Are You Being Too Nice to Your Characters? Why Suffering Matters in Suspense
By Jen Craven • Here’s a truth many writers (myself included) sometimes resist: if your characters aren’t suffering, your story probably is. In the world of suspense fiction, suffering isn’t just dramatic flair—it’s fuel. It’s what cranks the tension,…
Settle and Slake by Mikki Aronoff
We strive to slide and glide but list from side to side, bob up, bob down, settle for a sec or a minute. We shake our balding heads in minute arcs, lest we fall and fracture. We slake worries,…
