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Fiction

The After Birth

By May 7, 2021
This whole idea, combined with the world “nuchal”—it made me hate Kay even more. I imagined her as this hunchbacked, creeping thing with a big bag of fluid on the back of her neck like a goiter.

Absolute Best

By April 30, 2021
But it took three months before she was ready to block Graham. She trembled as she prepared to do it, too, because she had just discovered she was pregnant.

Alobam

By March 19, 2021
Obum stretched his hand with the same carefreeness that he reached for Ralu’s balls and turned up the volume.

The Inland Sea

By January 8, 2021
And the phone rang, and it rang, and the woman screamed once more, and I connected to another number, and told her the ambulance service would answer as soon as they could, and it rang twelve times while she screamed and the siren blared above the windows while the rush-hour crowds streamed through Hyde Park.

Counting

By February 12, 2021
The next day I felt all right, so I split a strip between the two of us, but she was still too sick to come with me to the food pantry. I used to go every Wednesday for my community service and after it ended I just kept going.

Gold

Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde November 20, 2020
This country, Gold’s mother thought. This country. This country. She didn’t know what to feel. She didn’t need to see it to know: outside, something was starting. The sun had slipped out and the law was standing in its place in the sky, beating its chest and roaring.

Cat World

Fiction by Elle Nash October 2, 2020
I change my avatar from a catgirl with blue eyes to one with green eyes. The new catgirl still has short black hair, but instead of a schoolgirl outfit, she’s wearing a black triangle bikini with white edging and her breasts are huge.

Flour Baby

Fiction by Megan Cummins September 18, 2020
Ms. Bird stood in front of the class, holding a bag of flour. “You’ll dress up your flour babies, you’ll name your flour babies, and your flour babies will go everywhere with you for two weeks.”

The Mighty Oak

An excerpt of the novel by Jeff W. Bens September 11, 2020
He kept meaning to get back to Boston. From Texas. From Florida where he was before Texas. He hasn't seen his daughter. He's ashamed that it will take his own mother's funeral for him to see her, to see Kate for the first time in four years.

The Killer

Fiction by Sarah Gerard August 21, 2020
A man exited the back of the house and stood looking at each of them. He was rangy like a bird of prey, and Amy startled when she noticed a large gun riding on his shoulder.

The Sudden Change

Fiction by Qais Akbar Omar July 31, 2020
After yelling “freedom” a few times with the jubilant masses, he realized that everyone around him was still in a state of shock and disbelief, and no one was prepared for their sudden liberty.

The Wild Laughter

An excerpt of the novel by Caoilinn Hughes July 24, 2020
I won’t make excuses for the Chief—he shouldn’t have heeded such an infested-arseholed skiving prick, but they’d copied each other’s algebra sums on the school bus, so why shouldn’t they copy each other’s assumption sums on the train to Dublin?

Blue Ticket

An excerpt of the novel by Sophie Mackintosh June 26, 2020
Girlhood was gone. Girlhood was over and dead for us all. We didn’t miss it. In its place, anything could happen.

High Ground

Fiction by Jackson Tobin April 23, 2020
The shed is dark except for the triangle of dusty sunlight that reaches through the crooked doorway. You and Adam are huddled in the back, breathing hard. Notice the dark: darker than the empty baseball fields in moonless winter; darker than sleep.

Theater of Shadows

Fiction by Steven Millhauser February 27, 2020
Beneath or beyond the performances lay the fascination of the shadow-world itself, with its hiddenness, its refusal of color, its indifference to familiar effects of visual precision and detail.

The Dogs

Fiction by Miriam Gordis January 27, 2020
Emilio looked prophetic for a moment. He held up his forefinger like he was shushing me and I thought he was pointing to the sky to tell me, God will provide. But then he just shrugged and scratched his scalp. “Soy is pretty nutritious,” he told me.
A black-and-white image of two male construction workers, wearing hard hats, in conversation.

Born Slippy

An excerpt of the novel by Tom Lutz January 16, 2020
Much later, after everything that happened, Frank no longer found much pleasure in the Great Books—he suspected they mocked him, that they, in a way, had written his own downfall, his own eventual exile.

The Book

Fiction by Zulema Renee Summerfield October 30, 2019
The book said “Let’s talk about your new-found liberation” and I wrote “Fuck men” and the book said “Elaborate please” so I wrote “My whole life I’ve been shaping myself around boys and men” and then the book said “Show your work” so I did.

Anne of Cleves

Fiction by Brandon Taylor September 19, 2019
She’d cried because she had expected it to be awful, and it hadn’t been. But she felt embarrassed about the kiss, and she’d asked Sigrid if she could just lie there next to her, if it was all right just to be in bed together, and Sigrid had said, Of course, of course which had felt both like an act of mercy and an act of contrition.

Better

Fiction by Emily Barton August 12, 2019
The thing was, she had wished a thousand times for a different child. In moments of crisis, she wished passionately that he could be someone else, someone calmer, or more adaptable, or more like her. She hated herself for these wishes because he was also precious to her beyond reckoning.

The Paper Wasp

Fiction by Lauren Acampora June 3, 2019
The sun was ruthless, impressing a sense of danger with each step I took away from the road. The heat was primordial, baking through my skin, drying my muscle and bones, desiccating everything but my darkest, wettest core.

Doppelgängers

Fiction by Jean Chen Ho May 28, 2019
Later, when the rest of the girls said they were dipping out to another bar, Fiona stayed behind. “Use a condom!” Tish had whispered in her ear before giving her a slap on the butt, like a coach sending a player out on the field.

Lil Spin

Fiction by Geovani Martins, translated from the Portugeuse by Julia Sanches May 17, 2019
After the blunt, I started trippin’, watching seagulls flyin’ on high. When I looked straight at the sun, everything glowed, way mellow, way marola.

We Are Here

Fiction by Aysegul Savas April 29, 2019
We exchanged stories of our hosts in a sort of competition, observing everything they did like anthropologists or comedians. One of us slept on a fold-out couch in the kitchen. One suspected that the “uncle” who visited the family weekly, while the father was away in Switzerland, was actually the mother’s lover.

Iceland

Fiction by Jessica Shattuck April 24, 2019
The whole right side of Nancy’s body, the side closest the ledge, prickled with horror and disgust. The wind lifted and tugged at her hair, and her head echoed with her own ineffective shouts. She stood frozen by the ledge that the baby bird had just tumbled off.

Princess Bari

An excerpt of the novel by Hwang Sok-yong, translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell April 15, 2019
Grandmother searched the house inside and out, but I was nowhere to be found. Fearful of how Heaven might curse them and filled with pity for her daughter-in-law and poor little granddaughters, she filled a porcelain bowl with cold water, placed it on a small, legged tray and sat out back, rubbing her palms together in prayer.

Trump Sky Alpha

Fiction by Mark Doten February 5, 2019
And a flood of racist memes, Trollface with turban and beard, Nyan Cat with turban and beard, worries about MS-13 rampages and looting, the “illegals” who are waiting to murder your family as civil society cracks.

The Quiet Boy

By January 28, 2019
But there was no Goldilocks in his story. There were only the Wolfs, who lived together in a cave above a town. Big Wolf, Middle Wolf, and Little Wolf. Big Wolf was a brute. Little Wolf was timid. Middle Wolf was the peacemaker.

Pledge

Fiction by Anton DiSclafani January 17, 2019
He started by pushing her onto the bed and kissing her, and it was then that Kenlee knew she did not want to be there. She did nothing to stop Robbie. It would not matter if she had.

The Absolved

Fiction by Matthew Binder November 29, 2018
The man’s cheeks are so hollow and gaunt that the yellow skin on his face hangs off them like dead weight. When he gasps for breath, I notice that there are more teeth missing than not.

Come With Me

Fiction by Helen Schulman November 22, 2018
The first three months of the start-up they’d worked out of Donny’s room in the “Entrepreneurs’ Dorm,” but that hadn’t lasted long. Thank God, really, because it smelled like a dorm room, and there was always pee on the toilet seat, just like in the twins’ bathroom at her house.

A Very Good Man

Fiction by Jianan Qian November 12, 2018
How funny to hear Grandpa Zhang say something other than, “I’ve got candies!” He seemed very excited to have some duties at last. When I stuck my head out of my window to greet him, he put on a serious look and shouted, “The typhoon’s coming. Close your windows, little Qin! Stay safe.”

The Wolf

By November 6, 2018
For that one night, the moon takes away our animal memory and illuminates our past, our present, and our hopes for the future. It makes you feel sick and deranged and filled with unbearable and exquisite longing. It drives us nuts.

The Elevator

Fiction by Karen E. Bender October 25, 2018
She banged on the elevator door with her left fist and then fumbled through her purse. All she had that approximated a weapon was a ballpoint pen. Her purse revealed some tawdry, ill-conceived faith in human nature. The elevator door made a deep, echoing thud as she hit it, and the doors remained shut.
Guernica
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