https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/life-on-land-by-nina-maclaughlin Katya can hold her breath for over seven minutes. She’d practiced alongside us in the pool. Up to her chin, she kneeled in the shallow end and took a deep inhale and long slow exhale, so long it seemed impossible her lungs had gathered that much air, not balloons for birthday parties there below her ribcage, but hot air balloons, enough to attach a basket and float over hills. Her heart slowed, something went … [Read more...] about Life on Land
Web Exclusive Interview: Keenan Walsh
January's Web Exclusive, "Flood," describes a significant moment of change in a troubled family's life. It's notoriously hard to master a run-on sentence, but author Keenan Walsh does it here. In editing, we realized there was no way to break it up without losing its very necessary urgency, that the whole thing was an intricately woven tapestry that needed to stay intact. What's more, the form forces the modern, harried reader to slow down and take in shimmering details that they might otherwise … [Read more...] about Web Exclusive Interview: Keenan Walsh
Web Exclusive Interview: Zach Powers
In Zach Powers' flash fiction story, "Surface Treatments," a father paints himself into a corner—literally. While the circumstances are absurd, there is such an accuracy and familiarity in the helpless acceptance of his wife and children alternating between observing and gamely participating in his self-exile. We spoke to Powers about writing, this story, and—since he's also an expert on the subject—what to do when you're in Savannah. — Erin McReynolds: Something about this scenario—an … [Read more...] about Web Exclusive Interview: Zach Powers
Five Questions for the Snake Charmer
https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/five-questions-for-the-snake-charmer-by-c-pam-zhang At some point on my way to the nephew’s birthday without a present, somewhere between swigging Gatorade and weaving around piss puddles and clamping my lips against vomit or provocative statements (as my dear sister puts it), I feel a hand grab mine. A shock of warmth, then the hard shove of a box. I watch enough news to know: I'm holding a bomb. In a few seconds the wet red jelly of … [Read more...] about Five Questions for the Snake Charmer
Flood
https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/flood My sister couldn’t see till she was seven, after we’d moved across town for the fifth time because all our landlords “had it out for us,” as my parents said, and the new place was in a better neighborhood because my mom’s boss owned it and had cut us a deal on rent, so we were zoned at a better school that was more equipped to deal with my sister’s seizures than our old school had been—though since she’d switched to phenobarbital the year … [Read more...] about Flood
I’m on the Side of the Wildebeest
I’m with my family watching bats circle through the dusk around the upper rim of the Grand Canyon when the bank calls to ask if I’ve purchased $1,279 of perfume, liquor, and cigarettes in Montreal in the last hour. It seems unexpected, the phone agent says, and I imagine the list of my actual purchases from the last two days: gas, pretzels, candy in cellophane bags, one night at a Best Western in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, where the hot tub was questionable but we all sat in it anyway because after … [Read more...] about I’m on the Side of the Wildebeest