Nobody at the Powers That Be figured out the source. But something happened. And below, the town experienced a tired day. Everyone woke. Carol showered. Alfred ate breakfast. Sandra contemplated suicide. Others kissed spouses or parents or pets or…
By Kate Finegan • The Pieces Left Behind In Cathy Ulrich’s debut flash fiction collection, Ghosts of You (Okay Donkey Press, 2019), the murdered lady sets the plot in motion. These forty stories are all named in the same…
I can’t wear my black V-neck to take yearbook pictures today because I wore it to a funeral last Friday, so now it’s my funeral shirt. Which is crazy, I know, because it’s not like I’ve worn it to…
By Matthew Duffus • In a June 2014 interview with The White Review, Diane Williams described one of her writing goals as “to provide some mystery, a place to meditate, where I might be nearing a new insight, if…
Our hotel in Rome is a former monastery, darkly shadowed, stone. There is no elevator. He hauls both of our suitcases up three flights of stairs. I wait for him at the top. His muscles flex, his forehead creases.…
The end is near! (The end of the year.) Here is our penultimate 2019 roundup of new fiction releases we can’t wait to read. They basically all come out on the 5th, so you have plenty of time to collect…
After Dinner A woman sits at a kitchen table, sipping chamomile tea and reading a book. The dishes have been rinsed, the counters and sink cleared, the dishwasher hums. Outside the window over the sink, the night is…
By Alyson Mosquera Dutemple • Long before we discover that the main character, a little boy named Harry, will drown in the final moments of Flannery O’Connor’s “The River,” we are unsettled while reading the story. On the surface,…
I want to bring the rubber ducks. Patrick wants me to leave the rubber ducks behind. We bicker about it for days, before the move, and when our closets have been emptied and we’ve packed the essentials and there…
Essay by J.A. Tyler • There was something about Shane Jones’s new novel Vincent and Alice and Alice that held me at bay. I’m a huge fan of his work, loved his previous novels, have admired his style for years.…
