Fiction

The Crooked Heart of Mercy

Billie Livingston -

We're pleased to present an excerpt of Billie Livingston's most recent novel The Crooked Heart of Mercy, a brave, funny and heartbreaking novel about...

Tahoe

Kate Folk -

We’d been warned not to ride the ATVs straight up the hill, but we did, and one of us, I think it was Joel,...

The Outpatient

Philip Brunst -

“With my daughter,” Genevive said to Mercedes, “all I had to do was ask myself, ‘If I don’t, who will?’ You see, even as...

I’m The Teacher Who Saved Your Life

Anna Prushinskaya -

This happened during the fall of 2009, when everywhere I went people were anxious about the financial crisis. This was in Rockford, IL, where...

Daddy I’m A Clown

Kevin Mandel -

Gone. Them. Really gone. Eventually she could talk about it easily. Perhaps too much so—glibness being an occupational hazard she was keen to avoid. “Not...

Sister, Stripper, Window

Ruth Madievsky -

Debbie lost her virginity to my eighth grade English teacher. She was in tenth grade. He was in his mid-twenties, probably. We had this...

The Neighbor

Deepa Shankaran -

No one knows that I lost my job, except the neighbors. They see me in my pajamas on the fire escape, or on the...

The Last Hot Day

Hazel Foster -

Spread out on the beach, Izzie presses her ear to the towel. She turns over fistfuls of sand, digging her fingers deeper into the...

The Origin of Jaanvi

Mahak Jain -

As I usually do on the weekends, I went shopping at Costco after lunchtime, packing the trolley with diapers for newborns, though I had...

Combo Number 3

Duncan Birmingham -

Where are his eyebrows? I had prepared myself for gaunt and pale, sure. Maybe with a bandana like Campbell Scott in that horrible movie with...