The young heroine of Kellie Wells' "A Unified Theory of Human Behavior," the opening story in Issue 56 of American Short Fiction, observes the world around her with an affecting mixture of sorrow and humor. "Kellie Wells," writes the wonderful Matt Bell, "will break your heart with a sentence, with a story, with the irrepressible smile at her wit that lights across your face even as on the page sadness swells and grief abounds." The story chronicles a young girl's tangled efforts to make sense … [Read more...] about Inside the Issue: Kellie Wells reads from “A Unified Theory of Human Behavior”
Online Fiction: Interview with S. P. Tenhoff
In this month’s fiction feature, S. P. Tenhoff does to a border what Wallace Stevens did to a blackbird—he lets it write him. Tenhoff’s "Ten Views of the Border" outlines the bewilderment of a newly divided populace by detailing a scandalous cross-border birth, two intricately mirrored origin stories, and the troubling circumstances of a woman whose very existence seems the hinge on which the border depends. And yet even as Tenhoff deftly lays down the absurd workings of this people divided, … [Read more...] about Online Fiction: Interview with S. P. Tenhoff
Ten Views of the Border
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