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

STORY OF THE WEEK

Winter Dreams

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people—he wanted the glittering things themselves.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Prayer

By Laura Kasischke

Puddles left in ditches. Black mirrors with our passing reflected in them, but I’d have to pull over and kneel down at the side of the road to know.

SIX-WORD STORIES

Six-word stories combine poetry and drama into a short form difficult to achieve. We’re looking for six-word stories that can stand alongside the best that have been written. See the Guidelines.

MASTERPIECES

Pe‘ahi Poems

By W. S. Merwin

Thank you my lifelong afternoon late in this season of no age thank you for my windows above the rivers thank you

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.

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The Clean-Out, a story

By Yasmin Adele Majeed
Introduced by Anthony Marra

I was going to Williams in the fall. It would be my first time leaving California, and my first time leaving home.

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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.

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CARTOONS

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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.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2024-11

By Various Artists

New laughs at the grocery store, in pointedly choosing companions, while struggling to finish dinner, 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.