I am heaving in the southwestern corner of an open-air outlet mall five days before Christmas. This is the desperate and empty sort of heaving required to stop a sob and close off the valve of emotion. A hiccuping…
The June 2020 edition of new fiction we can’t wait to read! Carlos Manuel Álvarez, The Fallen (translated by Frank Wynne) “A dreamlike yet insightful novel of a family and a country decaying from the inside….The reader is pulled…
Mom says it’s my fault, because I insisted on taking the cat through the heavy twin doors, but who leaves a cat in a car in a parking lot on a seventy-nine degree day, with sun shining down and…
Holly Root: Hi Barbara! So, you wrote a book. Congratulations! My memory, supported by reviewing our text threads and Gchats from the time this was going on, is that writing a book is, to use some official industry jargon,…
Iris Garr rose at four every day before school to feed and water the dogs in the barn. They weren’t hers. They would never be hers. She used to beg—how old had she been then? She didn’t remember it,…
By Gerry Stanek • James Baldwin finds a unique way to interiority in “Sonny’s Blues,” which was first published in 1957. I say unique, because I’m not sure there’s another story like this; a character’s thoughts and perceptions are…
This isn’t the first time. Sometimes, it feels like she’s always climbing this tree: when her little brother betrays her; when her memory fails her; when she barely passes a test and her father tells her, “One more C…
By Peter Selgin • The older I get, the less interested I am as both reader and writer in things are that—or that feel—“made up.” Put in positive terms, the more attracted I am to stories and novels that…
The slime of shredded pork meat coats Minh’s fingers as she mixes strands of mushroom, carrot shavings, and salt. Her hands ache from clawing, squeezing, and lifting. She wants to sit, but she needs to have her feet planted…
Topping our TBRs—new fiction for May, 2020! Dima Alzayat, Alligator & Other Stories “Alzayat’s slim, powerful debut collection showcases the author’s deep empathy and imagination in stories about grief, assimilation, and trauma… This intelligent collection is a force to…
