I’m in Joshua Tree, California, the very last time I set out to stargaze. I’ve come for the month of July to this hallucinogenic desertscape inland of Los Angeles, where my goal is to disconnect from daily life. Oneness with the universe and all that. As a debut author, I’ve been spooked by too much attention, and so I look up and think about how good it is to disappear into these constellations, so far from human concerns. This is one of the last nights I see the stars in California. Two ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
The North
My uncle was driving us north, where the enemy planes hadn’t yet attacked. He took turns drinking from a bottle with the man sitting up front. My parents and I were squeezed in the back. My mother closed her eyes and held me close. My father kept biting his lips. “Drink up,” my uncle said, passing the bottle to my father. My father returned the bottle untouched. Everybody else we knew had already left the city. My uncle was the only person still in town with a car. I didn’t know why we ... [READ MORE]
Less Than Five Miles from Home
My mother and I were heading north out of Marathon, Florida, in the middle of the night, everything we owned in the back of the car. I was thirteen, and she was driving. We were coming off an overseas bridge when someone screamed from the opposite side of the street. I glanced left for a second—a woman, long black hair, white tank top, she might have had her hands to her mouth, or I might have made that up afterward—before looking back at the road, just in time to see whatever it was we were ... [READ MORE]
Karst
He wakes in the landscape of his childhood, the karst. The house is surrounded by stone that dissolves in water, limestone that becomes fissured and hazardous because of its own weakness. The clints are the parts left standing. Grykes are the absences between. It is in the grykes you find life: hart’s tongue fern, butterfly orchid, primrose. Sheltering in the sinkholes. This is a place of constant change. Changing stone. Changing light. As a child, he would go out at morning and all around ... [READ MORE]
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
Margot’s destination is a walled medieval village several thousand feet above Trapani, overlooking Punta del Saraceno and the Mediterranean Sea. The village can be accessed only by a single road and as the taxi winds its way up through the arid copper hills, her phone chimes in her purse. It’s her sister, Louise, calling from the airport in Rome. “I’m not coming,” she says, her voice dwarfed by the echo of gate announcements. Louise is scheduled to attend a conference at the village’s ... [READ MORE]
2020 American Short(er) Fiction Prize Winners
We are thrilled to announce the winners for this year's American Short(er) Fiction Prize, judged by Deb Olin Unferth. Thank you to everyone who submitted—reading your work during this time has been a bright spot for us. Congratulations to the winners! _____ First-Place Prize: "Ricky" by Whitney Collins Judge Deb Olin Unferth writes, "Hilarious, rageful, sorrowful, and yet somehow adorable, this satiric story is full of energy and personality to spare." "Ricky" will be published in an ... [READ MORE]