For all intents and purposes, Leaving the Sea is Ben Marcus’s first “true” short story collection. Arriving almost twenty years after his debut, The Age of Wire and String, the stories demonstrate an impressive and almost un-stomachable ability to jump from one style to the next, yet they're watermarked with voices so uniquely Marcus's own. When I had the chance to speak with him over the phone, I fanboyed-out about this dexterity and acuity, his stylistic hopscotching. “In some ways,” he said, ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
Inside the Issue: Kellie Wells reads from “A Unified Theory of Human Behavior”
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]
Along for the Ride: At the Waffle House with Mary Miller
The table at which I wait for Mary Miller in a Waffle House off US-183 in Austin is disappointingly well-kept. It’s my first experience with a Waffle House, so I expected and hoped for a table with spilled sugar crystals, the surface sticky with syrup. That the table has been recently wiped clean is briefly, marginally disappointing, and I feel slightly robbed of the desired authenticity. What I believe is the authentic Waffle House experience is how Mary Miller depicts it in the first few pages ... [READ MORE]
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]
Things American: Authentic Desire & the Root of Sexuality in HBO’s “Girls”
What if I said I do not believe in desire? As the holidays wind down, and with them the inundation of images of midnight smooches on New Year’s Eve and nuclear families unwrapping presents by the tree, I am always left with that seasonal-depression-idea that I’ve somehow failed to live up to the status quo—those unreachable expectations. And then I pause and think, “Wait, why do I care? That’s not even what I want.” I’m thrown by how much those desires feel, momentarily, like my ... [READ MORE]
Bourbon & Milk – Thankless Chasms, Unlearnable Lyrics, and the Warmth of Home
Bourbon and Milk features lessons, observations, and conversations by and with writers living out there in one of the most perplexing outposts of the human condition – parenthood. In this monthly series, Contributing Editor Giuseppe Taurino dives into the dark 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 at ... [READ MORE]