The imposition of borders was met, initially, with something akin to relief. This isn’t to say that the citizens of the region were pleased at the prospect of seeing their familiar world dismantled before their eyes, but the period leading up to the imposition had been, let us not forget, pestered by rumor and anxiety. Now at least matters had been decided, and there was a general hope on the part of both the Northwestern and Southeastern Inhabitants (strange to hear ourselves defined this way!) … [Read more...] about Ten Views of the Border
Online Fiction: Interview with Monica McFawn
This month we're excited to bring you Monica McFawn's captivating “Ornament and Crime,” the story of a family surviving the tyranny of a father's taste for minimalism. It's a sharp-witted tale that manages to bend something as lofty as aesthetics into strange, tender moments. Monica lives in Michigan, where she teaches writing at Grand Valley State University. Her stories have appeared in places like The Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Web Conjunctions, and Gargoyle. Her collection … [Read more...] about Online Fiction: Interview with Monica McFawn
Inside the Issue: The Roots of “Are You My Mother?”
"Are You My Mother?"--the clever gem that concludes our new issue, by Short(er)-Fiction-prize runner-up Sabrina Orah Mark--has what we might think of as a famous grandmother. A great many of us were raised on P.D. Eastman's classic children's book of the same title. Eastman's book, first published in 1960, is a widely adored story about the search for love and belonging. Mark's story takes this allegory and drags it into the lonely, fragmented, rootless, go-it-alone context of modern adult … [Read more...] about Inside the Issue: The Roots of “Are You My Mother?”
Ornament and Crime
My father has died and in my hand are his remains—ashes pressed and fired into a small, flattish cube—and I’m laboring to insert him into something so he sits flush. He always wished to be a geometric form (so often did he rail against “the tyranny of the organic”) so I could tell myself he’d be happy, but he also hated bric-a-brac and I think right now he’d qualify, being a small object with no function. Better to join him with a nice flat plane. Shim up a gap on a sleek modernist home. … [Read more...] about Ornament and Crime
Notably
Huge congrats to the authors whose ASF stories were recognized as notables, or distinguished reads, in the most recent Best American Short Stories and Best American Non Required Reading anthologies: Laura van den Berg, Robert Boswell, Maggie Shipstead, Roxane Gay, and James DeWille. … [Read more...] about Notably
Spray Painted Drums
Writer Amelia Gray participated in a collaboration with the Portland-based band Loch Lomond, in which a different author wrote a piece of fiction to accompany each track of the band's latest release, White Dresses. The stories will be collected in an illustrated book that will be a companion to the album. Here is the song she was assigned, followed by her contribution: I hope you catch me I'm a ticker tape parade You did it kid you beat fun Look up now you have won, won, won Now we've … [Read more...] about Spray Painted Drums