I’ve been collecting snores from the first night we slept together. No sex yet, just sleeping—passed out on a friend’s couch after a night of wildness, back when we were wild, back when we ordered tequila shots with lime…
“A day of fun,” my father had said, but that Sunday only involved walking from one place downtown that was closed to another. He bought white sheets for my bed at the only store open. This wasn’t long after…
Essay by Sonja Srinivasan • Russian writers never shy away from penetrating insight into all facets of the human psyche: we read Russian novels precisely because they “go there.” There is also a strong dramatic element to much of…
CHAPTER ONE — MIMI You might think I came to Africa as a humanitarian, dispensing medicine to babies so malnourished their delicate rib cages threatened to snap, rib after rib, in a glissando of tiny broken bones. You wouldn’t…
Notes on This Manuscript The following manuscript, printed here for the first time, came to light on the eve of November 4, 2024. While on a self-directed silent retreat at the Riverdale Center in the Hudson Valley, a Franciscan sister…
Jackie gets onto the elevator from twelve. She says hi to Barbara from sixteen, already on board. Sixteen is the penthouse but no one calls it that anymore, that’s elitist, although the Art Deco button panel still shows PH. …
One day when I was little, I trespassed the aluminum gate that was next to our little orchard in search of a Frisbee or Nerf ball or some such thing that we had sent flying, accidentally, over the barbed…
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.…
After Lucia Berlin In my story, the mother and daughter go out for dim sum on a Sunday, or a Saturday maybe, after basketball. My first draft was from the mom’s point of view, but then she got…
By Vera Kurian • How I wish I could go back and watch The Sixth Sense for the first time again, because when I first saw it, someone had already revealed the twist to me. In retrospect, it was…
