In a classroom, around the turn of the century, some writers and a professor gathered to dissect an early draft of a story. The professor asked the group, “What happens? Where’s the end?” The writers gave competing opinions until the author finally said, “We don’t know. That’s the point.” The beleaguered professor tossed a pair […]
Photo by Graham Holtshausen on Unsplash After Carl left me for a woman he met buying manure off Craigslist, I put in for an out-of-state letter carrier transfer with the postal service. I wanted a fresh start, a chance to discover something. It didn’t matter what. I wanted to learn something I never would […]
As the child of famous punk parents, Margot Highsmith is a daughter of privilege. When we first meet her, on a plane from New York to Montana, she seems in a bad way, though it’s not apparent why. What follows is a retrograde retelling of Margot’s life leading up to the moment when she abandons […]
Lydia Conklin’s Rainbow Rainbow, published in May of 2022 by Catapult, is a groundbreaking collection of short fiction depicting queer life with remarkable depth and complexity. Conklin’s multidimensional characters are refreshingly, and sometimes disturbingly, prototypical, refusing to fit into neat categories. The myriad existential struggles and ethical dilemmas characters undergo lack tidy resolutions, and are […]
One of very few things that can be safely said about fiction is that stories offer writers and readers experiences. Robert Frost famously said of writing poems, “no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” I quote that line a lot because I think it’s lovely and worth memorizing, but I know it’s […]
Some years ago, I was invited to a small private theater to watch a horror film, a genre that causes me great loathing but which, nevertheless, can hold my attention. During the most gruesome parts of the film, I decided to turn my back on the screen and instead observe the audience reaction. Studying the […]
It is easy to see how the stories forming David E. Yee’s debut collection, Mongolian Horse, bring to light the heartaches that accompany the end of one’s youth as each story’s protagonist gains a clear-eyed sense of life’s disappointments. Yee’s protagonists, mostly men in their twenties and early thirties, experience varying forms of loss, learning […]
Muriel Barbery’s A Single Rose follows a French botanist’s emotional tour through the Zen gardens of Kyoto, Japan, to discover joy beyond grief. Like Barbery’s previous novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, this book’s charm originates in the rebellious heart of its philosopher protagonist. Rose awakens jet-lagged in the Kyoto home of her late father, […]
Hope may be the thing with feathers, but according to Søren Kierkegaard, it can fly away from what is necessary, leading its pursuer into despair. This deceit of myriad possibilities is a living death, the obsessed having lost the semblance of self apart from the thing desired: an unrequited love, a career, or better yet—an […]
Deep River Photo by Intricate Explorer I Minnie walks out along the lip of the falls. Halfway between the riverbanks she pauses and lets the cold water push against her feet and calves. The sun is sinking behind the mill upstream. The shadow spreads toward her like a blue solution poured into the current. (“I […]