First by Ryan Van Meter
Ben and I are sitting side by side in the very back of his mother’s station wagon. We face glowing white headlights of cars following us, our sneakers pressed against the back hatch door. This is our joy—his and…
Tag: Setting
Summer Night by Joanna Pearson
They slept much better using a disc-shaped noise machine from which they could select a variety of soothing sounds: Ocean Waves, Birdsong, Tropical Breeze, Summer Night. They always chose Summer Night, so whatever season it was or should have…
Micro Home by Jonathan Cardew
She applied the last dabs of paint to the mermaid’s tail. “I’m about to die in here,” she said, knuckling a stray hair from her eyes. I opened a window. Outside, the woods were ablaze with soft browns and…
Girls, Monsters by Jaquira Díaz
When we were twelve, we taught ourselves to fly. —John Murillo, from “Renegades of Funk” All of us girls, now women. —T Kira Madden, from “The Feels of Love” That winter, we watched New York Undercover on group phone calls,…
Hybrid Interview: Madeline ffitch
By Candace Walsh • “We live in a world that has unconstrained wildness, and we like to forget we are part of that wildness,” says Madeline ffitch, author of PEN/Hemingway Award–finalist Stay and Fight. Fiction that only acknowledges characters’…
Paradise Pawn by Meg Richardson
We make a ton of money off Christmas in July, because customers have too much hope. It’s not their fault. Me and Rubina feed it to them. We decorate Paradise Pawn with tinsel and lights. We smile and hold…
Empire of Dirt by Jonathan Bohr Heinen
That morning, when they set out to follow the fence line that surrounded their property, Sarah Billard didn’t expect her daddy to stop at the southern section. She could hardly recall the last time seed had taken root there—all…
The Study and Practice of Astral Projection by Lesley Bannatyne
Cassie found the book at a bus stop next to a pair of abandoned men’s shoes: The Study and Practice of Astral Projection: The Definitive Survey on Out-of-the-Body Experiences, by Dr. Robert Crookall. On the cover was a drawing…
Prairie Fever by Annika Barranti Klein
The wind’s at it again. When this happens, I can’t sleep. There have been nights when it felt as though I was awake every minute, staring into the darkness and listening to the howling, swooshing, relentless sound. It gets…
Suspense in Flannery O’Connor’s “The River”
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,…