Hybrid Interview: Claire Oshetsky
By Cavar Sarah • I have never understood the fear of birds. “Because they are so far from us,” I am told by well-meaning humans. “Because we lack ways to tell what they are feeling.” I try to understand. I…
Tag: Gender
Question Twenty-Eight by Lisa K. Buchanan
When my widowed father was the age I am now, he married a woman the age I was then. The thirty-year difference didn’t bother his friends, though some objected to his haste, claiming he had but transferred my mother’s…
Paper Flowers by Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez
1. I’m on the 7 train on my way to Manhattan from Queens. My AirPods blast Cardi B’s “I Like It” as I squeeze my way through the crowded car, not liking the pushing and the pulling as I…
The Final Girl as a Middle-Aged Woman by Amber Sparks
This final girl is fleeing like all the others, flinging open the front door of a small suburban house. This final girl is screaming, long hair streaming, all torn T-shirt and superficial injuries and sudden athletic desperation. But something…
Following Floodlights Instead of the Moon by Gina DeMillo Wagner
The nature center has five baby sea turtles, each in their own 20-gallon saltwater tank. When I see them for the first time, I have to fight the impulse to plunge my hand into the water and scoop one…
Roach Farm by JT Baldassarre
We had gone to bed late, on usual terms: “Let’s just talk about this in the morning.” That night we did what we called “No Touch Sleep,” a nickname for exactly what it sounds like, lying next to each…
Hybrid Interview: Sara Lippmann
Essay by Michelle Ross • Since the first time I read a Sara Lippmann story, I’ve been smitten. Among the inventory of qualities I admire is her wit, her raw honesty, her faith in her readers’ ability to keep…
Terrible Things by Adelina Sarkisyan
I We’re closer than sisters. That’s what she tells me on the night of the full moon. We undress in her bedroom and wrap our hair with twine. This is what sisters do, she says, spreading a deck of…
Fangs by Tara Isabel Zambrano
The monsoon our mother delivers a boy, we’re saved from our father’s anger. Our hands are raw, unrecognizable, carrying hot water, tugging clean sheets beneath our mother’s heels, taut like our names. The baby looks whittled out of a…
Hybrid Interview: Rebecca Kuder
Essay by Jahzerah Brooks • The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival is, at its core, a story about tearing down and building up. In this debut novel set against the backdrop of a working carnival and a wartime munitions factory,…