Love them or hate them, year-end wrap-ups and best-of lists can help us make sense of our moment in history, and what moment in history has demanded that we search for clarity, meaning, and comfort like 2021? So, instead of offering a list of ASF staffers' favorite books published this year, we asked our editors about the books they read this year that sustained, inspired, moved, or changed them, regardless of when the book was published. What follows, then, is a hodgepodge of literary gems, ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
What the Tide Returns
She counts the children as they come through the door—one, two, and three—to reassure herself that they are hers. She can’t say just how happy she is to see them; she’s missed them all summer long. She hardly recognizes them; they’re browner than ever before, and somehow warmer to the touch. She hugs them and her hands come away coated with fine grains of sand. Both boys come back taller and sporting fresh haircuts. The girl is fuller around the hips and her hair is braided in a different ... [READ MORE]
Balikbayan
Two of my uncles hoisted the balikbayan box out of the truck bed. I heard the package hit the ground even though I was ten meters away, sitting on the porch, where I always sat. My seven younger cousins played with marbles in the shade, but when my uncles waved them over, they raced across the driveway to swarm the gift like moths around a fire. My aunts and uncles tore the tape away and removed a dozen toys, each wrapped in colorful cardboard and pristine plastic, jammed between hand-me-down ... [READ MORE]
The 2021 Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize Winners
We are delighted to announce that our brilliant judge, R.O. Kwon, has selected the winners of this year's The Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize. We consider it our privilege to have spent time with so many terrific submissions—thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work! Winner: Caroline Schmidt for “Particular Luck” Of Schmidt's story, Kwon writes, "I was especially moved by the physicality of grief in “Particular Luck,” its knowledge of how we are tied, in joy as in sorrow, to ... [READ MORE]
Matt’s
Day after the school shooting in Florida, my son’s elementary practices lockdown. When I pick his five-year-old self up in the parking lot crowded with parents I don’t breathe. I’ve been drinking, is why, so I hold my body in my mouth. “Noel and his partner are in town, we’re meeting for dinner at Matt’s,” I say to my boy, loading him in the car. Strapping him down. “We're good at traveling together,” my brother tells me at the restaurant. He takes a bite from his Juicy Lucy. “We're ... [READ MORE]
Rockaway
In May, Amy called to say she was squatting in the caretaker’s quarters of the Rockaway Motel. She needed her car; she wanted to sell it. When I pulled her old Volvo wagon into the dusky parking lot, I could see it had once been a nice getaway: empty pool in the middle of a courtyard surrounded by a clutch of cabins. Thick stands of pitch pine protected the motel from the sea. The caretaker’s quarters were cavernous and shadowy, a paneled welcome desk near the door. I shouldn’t have been ... [READ MORE]