Sudden understanding has snapped me from her side like a branch from a tree in strong wind.
(fiction)
Tag: Short Fiction
Back then, protecting the border was about preventing people from getting out; now it means not letting anyone in…
(fiction)
The synagogue of my youth wandered throughout the city, from the basement of the Methodist church on the Manayunk hills to the East Falls nursing home…
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“She washed her hair and chose the most suitable clothes her closet would allow, the kind of outfit she imagined the woman who headed up the office of human resources would want to see.”
(fiction)
I held my magazines in my lap and looked longingly out the window, believing myself to be a melancholic character in the movie of my life.
(fiction)
Her aunts—a year apart and almost identical in appearance—ticked all the boxes of conventional postcolonial standards of Bangladeshi beauty. They had the “fair and lovely” smooth skin, the black voluminous hair that touched their waists, and eyes with lashes that could put a doe to shame.
(fiction)
“Humor is so essential to having a well-maintained psyche, because if we take ourselves too seriously, we’re probably going to be miserable,” Christine Sneed tells interviewer Kathryn O’Day.
He moved close enough to whiff my aftershave. Our eyes met before he grimaced.
(fiction)
Show me a mistake that isn’t avoidable or a person who never makes one. How much easier these characters’ lives would be if they allowed themselves to fail and learn and grow.
(reviews)
She loved her Oxy, Hydrocodone, and Xanax, the pretty colors and shapes. She sometimes poured them all into her hand. Did she think about it? Of course, some days. It would be so easy—a glass of water, her favorite videos.
(fiction)
He’s standing around and a girl in a red coat makes him think of me. Or a French bulldog, that I would run to pat. Or a scent makes him turn back.
(fiction)
I was certain all was lost, that the curtain had been lifted to expose Double Take Creative for what it truly was: a two-bit operation run by a misty-eyed has-been and his oblivious minion.
(fiction)
The flight attendant checked the row number printed on the overhead compartments, consulted her paper, then looked directly at Mia. “You are a doctor?”
(fiction)
These characters feel like people you might know, people you meet on the dance floor at a Boystown club or a queer apartment party, people you’ve loved and lost.
(reviews)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“She didn’t think it would last, this quasi-détente or halfhearted madness or whatever it was.”
“Shame and living, living with it, living through it, living past it. This is what these stories are made of.”
(reviews)
Another Chicago Magazine 