https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/daniel-lopilato-your-father/s-gyGsG All of this is occasioned by a telephone call from my dad: I sit down on the couch, flip on the tube, and descend the cable channels to the low double-digits, where I find the red-jowled faces of men trapped inside too-tight sport coats going on at length about this player or that, and I know I’ve landed on the run-up to a baseball game. I have an immediate gut reaction to these men because, as it happens, I’m … [Read more...] about Your Father
The Mother’s Portion
https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/suzanne-morrison-the-mothers-portion The gravedigger was a woman. Tall, broad-shouldered, her cheeks flushed red from the cold. Or from shame. She hadn’t done the job we’d hired her to do: dig our mother’s grave. Father David, the priest from Gibraltar who looked and spoke like Michael Caine, had told her and the groundskeeper that the family would not be leaving until our dead was in the ground. It didn’t matter if the hole she had dug couldn’t … [Read more...] about The Mother’s Portion
Web Exclusive Interview: Suzanne Morrison
In our April Web Exclusive story, "The Mother's Portion," a woman with a husband and six children goes to extreme measures to reclaim herself. It's a surprising story; it makes triumphant that which we think of as affliction. We talked with author Suzanne Morrison about liberation, our mutual love of Maggie Nelson, and the importance of telling our survival stories. Erin McReynolds: We're used to seeing overeating as a disorder, and we're familiar with the trope that some anorexics (usually … [Read more...] about Web Exclusive Interview: Suzanne Morrison
Web Exclusive Interview: Jensen Beach
David Foster Wallace said that fiction is “one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved.” In our March Web Exclusive story, “To God Belongs What He Has Taken,” Jensen Beach deftly places us in the mind of a Stockholm woman caught up in a fantasy about a stranger. It is a subtle and detailed snapshot of a form of loneliness so universal that, in its confrontation, we find some relief. We talked with Jensen about how that’s done by writing other people, other … [Read more...] about Web Exclusive Interview: Jensen Beach
To God Belongs What He Has Taken
https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/jensen-beach-to-god-belongs-what-he-has-taken Marie buys her morning coffee at the convenience store on the corner of her block. One of the men who works there is named Ahmed. He is Iraqi. When he laughs, which he does often, his enormous belly shakes. She likes Ahmed. She’s been buying her coffee from him since she’s lived on this block, almost two years. In a week, the sale on her apartment, her first, will be final, and she and her daughter Tove … [Read more...] about To God Belongs What He Has Taken
The Hungry Valley
https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/kathryn-scanlan-the-hungry-valley Now he fed his horses too much rich corn sweetened with molasses: their middles were round and taut as barrels, and their hooves curled, and instead of nipping and tossing about like they had in the past, they loitered at the gate all day, calling out to him whenever he passed. His old dog he fed too much kibble and too many table scraps: its back was strangely broad and thin of hair like a threadbare piece of … [Read more...] about The Hungry Valley