“god at the side of the road” has the quality of folklore from centuries ago and worlds away that’s somehow been transplanted to contemporary middle America, a place that’s too new and too hopeful to understand the forces it’s confronting. It’s the narrative voice,...
I found the development in the final section of this story genuinely frightening—a dark fantasy in which the element of fantasy is so mysterious that you barely perceive the darkness until, in a glimpse of blood and teeth, it overpowers the page. Judge Kevin...
We’re so excited to announce the 34 titles of our shortlist! These stories are so good we've decided to publish them on the website this year prior to their publication in the print anthology! Thank you for your patience! From this list, Kathy Fish will select 20...
Without thinking too deeply about it we presume ourselves to be adequate parents. The baseline assumption is that we would do anything for the babies; we would fight, we would kill. Tonight somehow they outnumber us, although there are still two of them. The one who...
We’re so excited to announce the 62 titles of our longlist! The submissions we received were so resonant, engaging, and creative that we’ve had a hard time narrowing down the list! We'll announce the shortlist titles in the next few days! Thank you for your patience!...
After dinner, Father folds a swan out of his paper napkin. Mother says, “My, how early it grows dark.” First Daughter laughs at a flickering outside the window. She thinks it is an out-of-season firefly or a spark from the chimney, but really it is someone creeping...
—after Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express Clare dresses like an ice cream cone. Chocolate lace, vanilla skirts. All of it melting down her limbs, rain or slush. Faye is glad that Clare doesn’t give her an ounce of recognition—not when they sit next to each other in...
1. The bird flies in through an open window on the first story of the hotel. The bird flies through a patch of dead zinnia stems in a splintery wooden window box where the cat sits sometimes in the nice weather, his shiny fur full of the dust that is...
The bluegrass is dry and sick. “You were the one who survived,” I say. “You were very fortunate.” You are an expert forager, combing the orchard for chokecherries and fallen apples. The summer worms are desiccated and flat, but you capture a young garter snake...
“No small sensation has been made by the report of a duel between two ladies. . . . The [disagreement] was regarded as so serious that it could only be settled by blood.” —Pall Mall Gazette, August 23, 1892 We call it an emancipated duel—the duelists, seconds,...
It started out small—a red speck hardly noticed on the Harlem sidewalk. Maybe it drifted down from the heavens. Maybe a bird scavenged it from Central Park. Maybe it grew from a crack in the concrete. However it came to be, passers-by stepped over it without a glance,...
There was a man—there is always a man. There was the crush of gray wave. The cold bite of late fall. She’s been down here for so long, she can’t remember things she once would never have thought important enough to forget. What the ground feels like. What smoke...