Dylan James Brock While Sarah Witherspoon was still alive she was a mockingbird with a tin ear. Her attempts to recreate beauty never did justice to what she mimicked. When not insulting her outright, people called her Spoony. She was a plain brunette with thin hair and a thick brow that kept her from being pretty. The most remarkable aspect of her was how hard she tried and failed to be remarkable. Spoony wore different colored sneakers to...

Alan Drew PART 2 OF 4 Read Part 1 Here She and Dominic had only been meeting for three weeks, but it had really started months before that with a journal entry she wasn’t supposed to read. Nothing about Seth’s appearance betrayed a bat wielding attacker, and Bryson, he was on his way to UCLA, a good student, one of her favorites. What the fuck happens to people? I mean, they get old and turn into fascist dictator nazis who’ve...

Daniel Frankenfield Rick and I sat in the living room, breath falling from our mouths. The television was on but no cable to watch. We needed money. We needed cigarettes, food, heat and all the other things, but mostly money. There was a Uni-Mart up the street. Rick toyed with a hand rolled cigarette until the thing fell apart in his hands. It was true. It was a solid looking piece and could have fooled anyone. Rick paced the...

Sam Ramos The balloon drifted into the clouds and then a thousand more joined it. The pilots inside leaned out to her, each becoming ever smaller in the offing. It wasn’t that she was sad, though she was. It was life’s awful brilliance – the eternity of every single thing, small and big. A flood brought misery with it, but the click of her heels when she walked was sublime. Families were executed in turbulent times, but the scent of...

Nick Kimbro I listened for the fourth beat and felt how, as it passed, my entire body seemed suspended. 1-12-2011, 8:42 pm—Deceased brought in from snow. After signing transfer form, delivering officer, Deputy Desmond Fogle [#347], makes crass remark about deceased’s ‘knockers’ before surrendering Oklahoma state license with the name ‘Heidi Gordon’ printed beside an approximate picture of the deceased. I examine picture, and...

Lissa Franz Ian knew the pieces didn’t fit, but he wanted them to fit very badly, and the angrier Ian got, the harder he tried to make his anger into something that would change the way things worked. It was Kurt’s turn to host the neighborhood playgroup, and he felt uneasy as he located the Equal packets behind the sugar bowl. The women attending his little gala – his nascent fête – were all women who discussed him. He was a...

In an intimate discussion, the bestselling author talks about overcoming a psychologically abusive childhood, her dances on the dark side, and writing as liberation.

Dylan James Brock reviews "The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis"

Kathie Giorgio Although she invited him to stay afterward, even mentioning the chilled-for-months wine, he left, mumbling something about having an early morning church service and he’d call her. Delly thought she was a cat person, even though she didn’t own any cats. She collected dozens of feline figurines, but whenever she went to the local animal shelter to possibly adopt a real cat, she always heard her mother’s voice, echoing...

The author of House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days discusses his writing, his father, and watching "Batman" with Kurt Vonnegut.