It is time to raise your fruit for the winners of the 2016 American Short(er) Fiction Contest, judged by Amelia Gray! This year we had many wonderful submissions, so thank you to all who submitted to the contest—reading your stories has been an honor and a pleasure, a welcome reminder of the beauty and versatility and promise of the flash-fiction form. The first-place prize goes to Erin Somers, for her story “Canine.” Gray writes, "Funny, eerie and sharp as a bloody tooth, this story shows ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
Editorial Outtakes: M. Thomas Gammarino
Editorial Outtakes is a feature in which we publish excerpts from novels and story collections that you won’t find in the finished books because, prior to publication, these sections were cut. This installment of Editorial Outtakes features a deleted scene from King of the Worlds, the new novel by M. Thomas Gammarino, which tells the story of Dylan Greenyears, a has-been Hollywood heartthrob whose best days are seemingly behind him. After losing the lead in Titanic, Greenyears has left with his ... [READ MORE]
Web Exclusive Interview: Daniel LoPilato
What with baseball season now in full swing, May's Web Exclusive Fiction is incredibly timely—and yet timeless. In "Your Father," a dad and son try to connect through a televised baseball game. At its heart is a dilemma that has always played itself out and will continue to do so for as long as we have to contend with our parents' identities and our own, regardless of the technology involved. We talked with author Daniel LoPilato about the parent-child struggle, identity, and irony. Basically, ... [READ MORE]
Hunter S. Thompson & Oscar Acosta in the Desert:
A 45-Year Retrospective
1. _ On the morning of Friday, March 19th, 1971, Hunter S. Thompson, already the bestselling author of one book and long overdue on his contract for another, accepted what appeared to be a fairly innocuous journalistic assignment: write five hundred words of copy for Sports Illustrated to go along with a photo essay on the Mint 400 motorcycle race, which was scheduled to take place that coming weekend in Las Vegas 1. It was a cushy offer, to say the least: Thompson would get paid three ... [READ MORE]
Editorial Outtakes: Benjamin Warner
Editorial Outtakes is a feature in which we publish excerpts from novels and story collections that you won’t find in the finished books because, prior to publication, these sections were cut. This installment of Editorial Outtakes features a deleted scene by Benjamin Warner, whose debut novel, Thirst, was published by Bloomsbury last week. An intense, literary novel with the pacing of a thriller, Thirst is first and foremost a novel interested in asking us the question: what would you do in ... [READ MORE]
Web Exclusive Interview: Suzanne Morrison
In our April Web Exclusive story, "The Mother's Portion," a woman with a husband and six children goes to extreme measures to reclaim herself. It's a surprising story; it makes triumphant that which we think of as affliction. We talked with author Suzanne Morrison about liberation, our mutual love of Maggie Nelson, and the importance of telling our survival stories. Erin McReynolds: We're used to seeing overeating as a disorder, and we're familiar with the trope that some anorexics (usually ... [READ MORE]