“I liked scanning the sky, looking for signals,” says the narrator of Kelly Luce’s “The Ugliest Girl at Marcy’s Wedding Pavilion.” “Even when nothing happened, there was still that heartbeat. It was a space—it was space—where I could process what was happening in my life.” We’re all probably looking and listening for signals most of […]
“Whatever plans you think you got, you better get some others.” An ominous bit of advice given, in Brendan McKennedy’s “Deep River,” to a young woman struggling to make a meaningful life as a millhand in 1920s North Carolina, it might well be the motto for the last three years, when we’ve had to pivot, […]
Longtime readers of Colorado Review have come to know the fall issue for featuring the winning story from the Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction. We are so pleased to showcase this year’s winner, Mike Murray’s “Night Owls,” selected by final judge Ramona Ausubel. Of this story, Ausubel writes: “ ‘Night Owls’ takes place in the darkness—characters […]
As we make our way toward summer, our calendars begin to fill in anticipation of those longer days, those warmer nights: some of us braving travel again, some of us staying closer to home. Whether near or afar, we’ll likely spend more time with friends and family, though after more than two years of a […]
As we approach the third year of the pandemic—an ongoing interruption, suspension, cessation—some of us have been struggling a bit with our sense of time: Did we do that last year or was it the year before . . . The months seem to flow one into the next, often without the usual demarcations of […]
Among the many pleasures of this season is featuring the winning story from our annual Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction. Now in its eighteenth year, the prize was established in honor of Liza Nelligan, a writer, scholar, literary editor, and alumna of Colorado State University’s English Department. This year, that story is Danny Thiemann’s “One […]
It’s mid-May here as I wrap up this issue, and the snow from a not-unusual-for-Colorado storm just a few days ago is melting, giving way to something that bears some resemblance to spring, though I feel I hardly recognize it. For so many of us everywhere, this is a time when the familiar has been […]
A year into the pandemic we each continue to find our own ways of understanding and grappling with the nature of isolation, seeking self-care and coping strategies in these Groundhog Days of staying in, staying safe, staying sane. Many of us are, not surprisingly, finding comfort and companionship in reading. Among the joys of literature […]
As in every fall issue since 2004, we are delighted to present the winner of the Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction. This year’s winning story is “The German Woman,” by Josie Sigler Sibara. Lori Ostlund, who selected it, writes that it is “a beautifully written story—at times stark, at others lyrical—a story that provides a […]
Photo by Phil Roeder when you lift your toe, the fabric falls, folds. the ropes dance. your hair drags along the forest floor and my comb follows. tonight, we’re lost at sea, hidden in plain sight. let’s not worry our wishes into birds or close off a corner of the room. let’s have a thicker […]