STORY OF THE WEEK

Quitter By Sarah Orman

Quitter

By Sarah Orman
Instead of moving into a freshman dorm, I found an apartment with another seventeen-year-old girl and got a job at a bakery owned by a tyrannical French chef.

POEM OF THE WEEK

New Cold War By Grace H. Zhou

New Cold War

By Grace H. Zhou
Every day is a chance to hurtle from the warm burrow of ourselves—ragged breath, body raging—to count our dead, abolish borders, close the prisons, give back the land.

SEEKING YOUR BEST WORK

SEEKING YOUR BEST WORK

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

Please see the Guidelines.

HIGH SCHOOL CONTEST

Ivy By Aman Rahman

Ivy

By Aman Rahman
The heart cannot remember what the heart does—the mirror is no longer a mirror, it is a spectacle. No longer reflection: invention, ascension, loss.

FICTION

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

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.

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

The Audition By Sara Houghteling

The Audition

By Sara Houghteling
A piano audition with life-changing implications: Sara Houghteling’s reading from her novel in progress captivated the audience at Narrative Night 2017.

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.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Musée des Beaux Arts By W. H. Auden

Musée des Beaux Arts

By W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters: how well they understood its human position; how it takes place while someone else is walking dully along.

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

A Dream and Other Poems By Daniel Mark Epstein

A Dream and Other Poems

By Daniel Mark Epstein
I should have known this was not Eros but Athena come to earth for a little spell, leaving behind her aegis and golden staff to play at love as gods and goddesses will.

POETRY

POETRY

CLASSICS

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

Reading Auden (Christmas Morning, 2021) By Anne Lovering Rounds

Reading Auden (Christmas Morning, 2021)

By Anne Lovering Rounds
Your image on that volume of light verse: a poet nonchalantly smoking, indifferent to dressing well who had it nonetheless.

CLASSICS

#196, 1923 By Osip Mandelstam

#196, 1923

By Osip Mandelstam
Outside the window a star blazes. Inside, a votive’s quavering flame. It’s inevitable and it’s right that once—God knows—joy vanishes everything turns to ashes.

iPOEMS

IPOEMS

CARTOONS

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.

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.