We are delighted to announce that Justin Torres has chosen the winners of our 2017 American Short(er) Fiction Contest. The first-place prize goes to Claire Robbins, for her story “Arms Out.” Of the story, Torres said, "Everything about 'Arms Out' impressed me: the punchy voice, the wayward chronology, the gender troubling. This story is fine and clear and tough and winsome." Claire Robbins is an MFA candidate at Western Michigan University where she teaches creative writing, works in the ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
Web Exclusive Interview: Daisy Johnson
April's Web Exclusive, "A Bruise the Size and Shape of a Door Handle," is a haunting story whose slow, creeping tension evokes the likes of Edgar Allen Poe and Shirley Jackson. And yet it is so thoroughly modern, an enlightened study of unhinged, potent adolescent-female sexuality. Its author, Daisy Johnson, is surely destined for great things, so we're thrilled to have her story and interview here. Erin McReynolds: The collection from which this story comes is called, FEN, referring ... [READ MORE]
Web Exclusive Interview: Libby Flores
Our March Web Exclusive story, "Good," viewed a goodbye from the perspective of the one who did the dick move, "the bad guy," reminding us that good writing isn't at all interested in concept of "the bad guy." Author Libby Flores talked with us about writing the other side of the story, Amy Hempel's advice about tackling a big concept, and how Tom Waits lyrics are basically terrific flash fiction. Erin McReynolds: "Good" is nothing short of masterful in how much it gives in so few words: in ... [READ MORE]
Novelist of the Appetites: An Interview with Ashley Warlick
Ashley Warlick spent ten years on her latest novel, The Arrangement, a fictional retelling of the life and loves of famed food writer MFK Fisher. With lush, clean prose and pitch-perfect dialogue, Warlick lays bare the many appetites of a woman and writer ahead of her time. The novel spans the early years of Fisher’s career, a period marked by profound hunger as well as conflicting desires—for food, for recognition, for her husband Al and, later, for Al’s best friend, Tim. The book came out in ... [READ MORE]
Web Exclusive Interview: Michael Powers
In February's Web Exclusive, "Lake House," a couple has retired to a remote location. We know there is tension between them, and between the narrator and his adult son, but the origins and causes of this tension are only hinted at, the way a painting focuses its composition by suggesting some elements and detailing others. Our more detailed image is that of a drone silently making its way across the treetops of this new territory, reporting strangeness, even its own failure, to the lonely man ... [READ MORE]
Ex Marks the Spot: a Review of Mary Miller’s Always Happy Hour
Always Happy Hour, Mary Miller’s second collection of stories, opens with the strangest dedication I have ever read: "For my exes." Why would one dedicate anything to one’s exes? And not just one ex–not, say, “The One I’m Still Friends With”–but all of them, wholesale? At once blunt and tender, impersonal and twistedly sweet, these three words set a tone for the sixteen stories that follow. Exes–the crowd, the mob, the mass–preoccupy Miller’s aimless heroines. They trail behind the narrative ... [READ MORE]