Baltimore’s bus benches are simple, utilitarian things: just two molded concrete end-pieces and seven wooden planks that you wouldn’t think much of were it not for the slogan embossed on the slats of the backrest: “Baltimore: The Greatest City in America.” It’s an odd sentiment, not because there isn’t a lot to love about Baltimore, but because it seems less a statement of greatness than it does a statement of defiance. As with so many other American cities, Baltimore has famously and ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
American Short(er) Fiction Contest: Winners Announced!
We are pleased to announce the winners for the 2015 American Short(er) Fiction Prize, judged by Stuart Dybek. Thank you to everyone who submitted. We were overwhelmed by the breadth and quality of the stories, and, reading them, were thrilled again and again by the versatility and potential of the flash fiction form. The winning stories will be published in the magazine's fall issue. The first prize went to Jennifer Murvin, for her story "Emporium," a subtle rumination on a father's purchase ... [READ MORE]
Bourbon and Milk: Wonder and Worry
Bourbon and Milk is an ongoing series that dives into the perplexing spaces parenting sometimes pushes us, and explores the unexpected ways writers may grow in them. If you’re interested in joining the conversation or contributing a Bourbon and Milk post, query Giuseppe Taurino at giuseppe@americanshortfiction.org. I have a photograph of my son Simon—then four years old—holding up my collection of stories on the day it arrived in the mail. He’s so proud, his smile so huge that his eyes are ... [READ MORE]
Online Fiction Interview: David Naimon
David Naimon's "The Battle" is an oddball buddy tale of sorts set in a Black Sea bunker in some not-too-far-off future. The stakes are high—international tensions run deep as global warming has opened the arctic to shipping lanes—and Sergei, Naimon's protagonist, is charged with monitoring the progress of Russian submarines as they stake claims on the seafloor. This story has the distinction of being the ASF online exclusive in which the least actually happens, and yet, as Naimon told us in the ... [READ MORE]
Online Fiction Interview: Jake Wolff
This month's online fiction interview is with Jake Wolff, author of "When a Woman Thinks That her House Is on Fire." In this lyrical tale of one family's double-loss, we learn that Nasya and Ned have lost one son and we watch as they lose their house to a fire. More than a story of loss, though, the piece looks at the things that tragedy leaves in its wake. There is the memory of Henry. There's Nasya's subsequent dedication to serving the members of her synagogue. There's Nasya and Ned's ... [READ MORE]
Review: Elizabeth McCracken’s Thunderstruck and Other Stories
If, as George Saunders would have it, fiction is more interesting when death is in the room, then Thunderstruck and Other Stories, which won The Story Prize last week, is positively teeming with interest. Still, the various deaths and disappearances running through the nine meticulously crafted stories in Elizabeth McCracken’s moving and deeply cathartic collection could easily overwhelm if not for the charismatic force of her prose and darkly comic bedside manner. Where a lesser writer might ... [READ MORE]