I. Jason On the brink of Armageddon, I find myself in Stark County, drinking. We’re underground in a bunker, a former stockroom in the basement of a grocery store that’s been converted into a wartime bar. Patrons, in their…
The nurses, cafeteria workers, surgeons, Harold, they all irritated Darla. So did the old man in the room next door. He was dying, had been for days. Family kept streaming out of the elevator, stomping down the hallway and…
Katherine had only intended to spend a few minutes outdoors wiping the birdhouse with vegetable oil, but now, over an hour after she’d started, she stood in the front yard, an oil-drenched wad of paper towels in one hand,…
By Micah Perks • A reader recently emailed me about my new collection of linked short stories, True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape: she appreciated “all the tiny details, like breadcrumbs that you sprinkled along the way. Reading…
Henry takes the stairs three at a time, balancing a tray with a pot of coffee and two of the lodge’s signature blue-enamel mugs. An inch of fresh powder frosts the windowsills, and the light slants in to illuminate…
The CRAFT team of readers and editors is so delighted to share our 2018 nominations with you! For the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers: “Watershed” by Jack Noland The PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging…
By Melissa Benton Barker • Natashia Deón’s novel, Grace, is a both a warcry against and a lament upon the violence inflicted on the Black female body under the conditions of slavery in the United States. The novel is narrated…
I was walking with the broken pieces of my day in a thin cloth bag when I saw them sitting by the river, three women with the sun setting on their hair. They were eating strawberries, drinking rosé in…
CRAFT: In the Acknowledgments, you indicate that Late Air, your debut novel, grew out of a short story. Can you talk a little bit about that process? How did you know that this short story would be able to be…
By Laura Nicoara • So she would still find herself arguing in St. James’s Park, still making out that she had been right—and she had too—not to marry him. For in marriage a little licence [sic], a little independence there…
