“My stepdaughter is a horse.” The school psychologist waits for me to say more, then resumes her review of the pedagogical strategies she and Lilja’s teachers have employed. She speaks at a clip that makes me wonder if her…
I had the pleasure of chatting with Annell López, author of the award-winning debut short story collection I’ll Give You a Reason over coffee after work in New Orleans, where we both live and write. I’ll Give You a…
Elvis Presley’s warbling on the overhead speakers as Mom and I browse a warm, wood-splashed Barnes & Noble. She wants to buy a puzzle for my nephew in Florida. She turns to me. “Oh god, the day Elvis died?…
We fill up on deep-fried bricks of cheese and rib eyes big as our heads at Burly’s Roughrider Bar & Steakhouse. Our neatly laced Merrells and moisture-wicking Patagonias set us apart from the mud-splattered, steel-toed boots under most every…
I told my mom I loved her at a gas station in Minnesota but I’m not sure she heard. The cashier must’ve been stocking drinks or something so it felt like it was just me and her in there.…
“She cursed that baby—” “Her thirteenth, I heard, and who can blame her—” “You can’t blame her for thinking it, but doing—” “Who among us—” “I wouldn’t—” “That’s you, though, isn’t it?” “You’re better than us?” “You think she’s…
“The fuck you take your gloves off again?” you growled, never letting up, the oldest. Brother trip, our third in two years, anywhere there’d be northern lights. We hiked out of the frozen Alaskan woods—the black-dark, wraith rider intimidation…
I should have noticed when my wedding ring fell out of my pocket. I should have heard it strike and plink on the concrete floor in Big Willie’s dressing room behind the bar when I slung my jacket over…
Content Warning—sexual assault Along the western shores of Lake Ontario, the water splits the land and pools into a marshy inlet webbed with bike trails and bridges. I walk these paths every day, just wandering about, here and…
There’s a tipping point in life when a possibility becomes a certainty, and a metaphorical crossroads becomes a permanent change of direction. Amy Stuber is adept at finding pivotal moments in her fiction, choices that simultaneously disrupt expectations and…
