STORY OF THE WEEK

Another Irishman By Barry Gifford

Another Irishman

By Barry Gifford
The streets were empty except for a woman walking a dog. Roy ran across to her and said, “Excuse me, lady, but there’s a dead guy lying on the sidewalk over there.”

POEM OF THE WEEK

Closer Now to Blindness in Early Spring By Julia B. Levine

Closer Now to Blindness in Early Spring

By Julia B. Levine
You understand the meadowlarks’ song marks where their yellow breasts necklaced in a black V have disappeared into the darkness of me.

FINAL WEEK TO ENTER

FINAL WEEK TO ENTER
Deadline: Fri., March 31, at midnight, PDT.

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

Please see the Guidelines.

RECENT AWARDS

RECENT AWARDS FOR OUR WRITERS

RECENT AWARDS FOR OUR WRITERS

Year in and out, many of our authors receive notable awards, including the BASS and O. Henry prize, and many others. You can find their works here.

FALL CONTEST WINNERS

FALL CONTEST WINNERS

FALL CONTEST WINNERS

FALL CONTEST WINNERS

Straight Home By Janet Burroway

Straight Home

By Janet Burroway
In the movies lovers say, “I have never felt like this.” But this isn’t the movies. It’s a hollow in her midsection that sets the rhythm of her heart awry.

FALL CONTEST WINNERS

Blake Haveman By Andrew Steiner

Blake Haveman

By Andrew Steiner
Three days earlier, when she’d come to the farm for her interview, he’d caught the scent of her body odor. It smelled good, like the rind of a bitter fruit.

FALL CONTEST WINNERS

Sea Mud By Tiffany Isaacs

Sea Mud

By Tiffany Isaacs
She suspects the sea is an illusion, an invention of her mind pressed on the moving, breathing, million-celled prism of light and shadow, water and bone.

FICTION

FICTION

FICTION

FICTION

Sky Tumbling Down By Emily Besh

Sky Tumbling Down

By Emily Besh
He could remember seeing the bear approaching from behind and getting words out just quick enough that his father had time to turn and shoot. But barely.

FICTION

The Saturday Morning Institute of Human Survival By Carol Dines

The Saturday Morning Institute of Human Survival

By Carol Dines
The room was full of the kind of people I’d never met in graduate school—mostly guys in motorcycle garb with big guts and well-displayed tattoos.

FICTION

Crows, 1950 By Heinz Insu Fenkl

Crows, 1950

By Heinz Insu Fenkl
He was the son of a farmer, the one meant to become a scholar, who’d failed and become a professor of nonsense—an ŏngtŏripaksa.

FICTION

FICTION

FICTION

FICTION

The Applicant By Nazlı Koca

The Applicant

By Nazlı Koca
The moment I saw that Berlin was not a film set but a real, dark, and thrilling home to so many vagabonds, I knew I’d make it my home.

FICTION

Act III By Jill McCorkle

Act III

By Jill McCorkle
Who knew it was the first sign of this other thing—benign or malignant? Good or evil? Isn’t the whole world split that way?

FICTION

Dusters By David McGlynn

Dusters

By David McGlynn
Two years after surgery, Thorst still went to physical therapy three days a week. His knee wasn’t getting better and at this point it probably wouldn’t.

NONFICTION

NONFICTION

NARRATIVE 10

NONFICTION

A Palazzo in Florence By Bill Barich

A Palazzo in Florence

By Bill Barich
On the train from Pisa to Florence, we ate salami and focaccia and watched the Arno make its sluggish way through Tuscany in the brutal heat.

NONFICTION

Ringworm and the Blue Madonna By Phoebe Stone

Ringworm and the Blue Madonna

By Phoebe Stone
Everything soon became lost, spent in the wind. Nothing was permanent, no friend I made, no math test. No grade I received mattered because it would soon be left behind.

NARRATIVE 10

Narrative 10 By Will Schwalbe

Narrative 10

By Will Schwalbe
When it’s first thing in the morning, I still have the illusion that I can accomplish anything I want to, and everything I need to. By 10 a.m. that illusion is gone.

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

CLASSICS

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

The Writing Process By Donald Hall

The Writing Process

By Donald Hall
I’ve always been interested in people’s processes. A lot of people go long times without writing, and then are overtaken by something and can’t stop.

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

Tom Jenks on Editing The Garden of Eden By Tom Jenks

Tom Jenks on Editing The Garden of Eden

By Tom Jenks
Tom Jenks discusses his editing of Hemingway’s work and his thoughts about the book’s legacy. Until now, Jenks has discussed his Hemingway work only sparingly.

CLASSICS

May 3, 1915 By Marina Tsvetaeva

May 3, 1915

By Marina Tsvetaeva
I don’t mind that right in front of me you take someone else in your arms; I’m glad you don’t curse me out just because it’s not you that I kiss.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Dusklight and Other Poems By Colin Bailes

Dusklight and Other Poems

By Colin Bailes
Even now the bees are bathing in honeysuckle blossom, transferring pollen from stamen to pistil, changing gum into gold in the process.

POETRY

Daydreaming By DeeSoul Carson

Daydreaming

By DeeSoul Carson
Our planet revolves around a black hole, skating the edge of the event horizon. I know my loved ones by the names we have given our shadows.

POETRY

Silent Night By Caroline Falzone

Silent Night

By Caroline Falzone
It was winter in Vermont. White trees glittered, everything perfect as a snowglobe, calmed, on the mantel. My mother had recently lost her mother.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

For Richard By Henry Goldkamp

For Richard

By Henry Goldkamp
if I live today mostly quiet if a person can sing if you get away from the city if you've robbed any churches if you’ve thought about this

POETRY

Letters to God after Seeing a Sign for the National Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague in Prague, Oklahoma By Tory Huff

Letters to God after Seeing a Sign for the National Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague in Prague, Oklahoma

By Tory Huff
There is something godlike in naming a place. As if by naming it, you are also creating it. A field is just a field until you name it.

POETRY

Mise en Place By Anthony Immergluck

Mise en Place

By Anthony Immergluck
Somewhere, in all this body, I must contain a delicacy. Some sickly sweet, some ambergris, some rare and piquant cut. In all this souring, in all this toxic, find a part to smoke or cure.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

The Seventh Seal By Maja Lukic

The Seventh Seal

By Maja Lukic
I see a character play chess with Death in the middle of a plague, it looks like metaphor, it looks like a small prophecy.

POETRY

Biologists Test Promising Treatments for Hibernating Creatures By Julia McDaniel

Biologists Test Promising Treatments for Hibernating Creatures

By Julia McDaniel
To hibernate, then, is only a way of delaying need, the need for need. The body going on with its fits of being.

POETRY

Statues By Doug Ramspeck

Statues

By Doug Ramspeck
Sometimes the old men held their fishing poles like divinations, and the tops of their heads were like grass turning pale and desiccated with winter, annulled by snow.

iPOEMS

IPOEMS

iPOEMS

iPOEMS

Narrative By Madeleine Cravens

Narrative

By Madeleine Cravens
Obstacles must separate characters from their desires: this is called plot. The old woman wanted the fruit and the terrain of the village created a barrier.

IPOEMS

Sundials Are Sad Like That By David Grubin

Sundials Are Sad Like That

By David Grubin
Sundials lie in the light. The shadow carves the hours while the Latin, long dead, inscribes.

iPOEMS

Long Run By Richard Quigley

Long Run

By Richard Quigley
Hooves will beat across an American desert willing to dissolve itself. Your kindness, a heaviness I carry everywhere.

CARTOONS

CARTOONS

CARTOONS

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2023-01 By Various Artists

Cartoon Art Volume 2023-01

By Various Artists
New laughs with Shakespeare, before a judge, at bedtime, and with a blurry-eyed chef.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2023-02 By Various Artists

Cartoon Art Volume 2023-02

By Various Artists
New laughs involving a princess, grandma, friends, a dog, and a turtle.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2023-03 By Various Artists

Cartoon Art Volume 2023-03

By Various Artists
New laughs with a pair of rabbits, a grandfather’s big ideas, a co-worker’s advice, some good boys spreading the good news, and the promise of spring.