Narrative Magazine | Writers, Fiction, Poetry, Storytelling, Nonfiction, Art

STORY OF THE WEEK

Found and Lost

By Angélica Pina Lèbre

He doesn’t wait for my smile to fade to ask what perfume I’m wearing. His question like an invasion, but he’s not unwelcome.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Transfer of Power

By Rosalie Moffett

Fetal kick and election season and everywhere flags translate the direction of the wind into arguments about the future.

FINAL WEEK TO ENTER

Deadline: Tues., Nov. 26, at 11:59 p.m., PST.

We’re looking for short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, and excerpts from long fiction and nonfiction.

Please see the Guidelines.

FROM THE LIBRARY

No Place for You, My Love

By Eudora Welty

It was one of those odd meetings when such an impact is felt that it has to be translated at once into some sort of speculation.

NARRATIVE PRIZE WINNER

SPRING CONTEST WINNER

NARRATIVE PRIZE WINNER

October Phone Call and Other Poems

By Madeleine Cravens

My loneliness is not less because I understand it more, or because I have condoned it. Mist and roads in all directions.

SPRING CONTEST WINNER

Something Left Behind

By Madelena Grossmann

She knew you’d gone, that wasn’t what she’d come to hear; on this small island, everyone knows who comes, who goes.

FICTION

NARRATIVE 10

FICTION

Any Good Child

By Tryphena L. Yeboah

I’m convinced that Ma wants me to see, needs me to step into her world and learn its songs but never actually dance to its tune until it’s time.

NARRATIVE 10

Narrative 10

By Tom Jenks

If a story succeeds, the words carry the reader all the way home, back to life outside the story, having received gifts along the way.

NONFICTION

Antibes 1926: The Torment of Scott Fitzgerald

By Bill Barich

I hadn’t intended the trip to be a literary pilgrimage, although it evolved into one without my willing it.

NONFICTION

The Art of Becoming a Citizen

By Gail Godwin

One of the perks of living a long life is that you get to drop down and look around and see what happened afterward.

NNEXT>

Earth in the Time of Billie Holiday, a story

By Canisia Lubrin
Introduced by Saidiya Hartman

Combat commanded no serious loyalty from me or Siem, though it did have a first taste, a sound.

NNEXT>

Dead Man’s Run, a story

By Olufunke Ogundimu
Introduced by Tryphena L. Yeboah

One of the ghosts I walk with is me. It lives the life I left and continues to thrive as if I did not leave.

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

CARTOONS

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

The Transit of Venus

By Shirley Hazzard

An exclusive excerpt of actor Juliet Stevenson reading Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus with an introduction from our own Carol Edgarian.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2024-10

By Various Artists

New laughs with a financially savvy pharaoh, a perfectly regular late-night routine, a tough-lidded interview, and more.

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

Egress

By Saddiq Dzukogi

In Gwoza it was a simple announcement: they have been taken. Others are dead. The barn is on fire. Another, demolished.

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

About Suffering and Other Poems

By Julia Kolchinsky

How wrong they were, the old masters who mourned endings as though there was another way to return to water.

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

POETRY

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

This Close to Dark

By Brian Tierney

I can be the longest song on the jukebox. The coats people drape over their chairs to say Yes, I’m still here, I’ll be back soon.

POETRY

The Free Tower

By Ted Kooser

Behind her I slowly climbed, passing through a life’s history of all her odors, those years now happening all over again as I climbed through them.

POETRY

Brothel

By Edward Salem

I walked to the olive grove and stood among the trees, trying to memorize my awe. I stood among them as if in a brothel and inhaled the wind.

POETRY

The Trade-Off

By Chase Twichell

Strange then, strange now, to choose the white loneliness over the gathering next door, the air scented with lilacs and barbecue, with laughing.