STORY OF THE WEEK

Desert Wedding

By Valerie Trueblood
“Stay where you are,” she had to keep saying. She was the hiker. Why had she asked him to come along, someone she did not trust or even know?

POEM OF THE WEEK

Jesus and
the Internet

By Rebekah Denison Hewitt
Jesus is bread. He is also suffering. He is like the Internet, connecting everything that has ever been in humanity’s brain.

DON’T MISS

Deadline: Fri., Nov 30, 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.

FINAL WEEK TO ENTER

Deadline: Sun., Nov 18, at midnight, PDT.

A contest for writers, poets, artists, photographers, performers, and filmmakers between eighteen and thirty years old. Please see the Guidelines.

SPRING CONTEST WINNERS

First Place





Second Place





Third Place

SPRING CONTEST WINNERS

First Place

Tookies

By James Jung
The sex started almost as soon as they’d arrived in France. Or restarted, if you considered how long they’d been together.





Second Place

Somewhere with
a Sigh

By Jonathan A. Stableford
Fursten acted as if he had been sent. Was it possible, Kellett wondered, for an aging man to turn mystic?





Third Place

Wild Snow

By Jacqueline Jones LaMon
My job sometimes requires my silence, sometimes requires me to make things disappear like a Vegas magician.

FICTION

FICTION

FICTION

FICTION

Paris in the Dark

By Robert Olen Butler
My hand was still in my pocket, on my pistol. At the present time, small talk would be preferable to assassination.

FICTION

The Arms of Saturday Night

By Cally Fiedorek
They hadn’t yet kissed, or even talked that much, but late in the school year she’d felt his eyes on her.

FICTION

The Winter Soldier

By Daniel Mason
Lucius: the name, chosen by his father after the legendary kings of Rome, itself was mockery; he was anything but light.

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

NONFICTION

NONFICTION

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

Carol Edgarian in Conversation with Susan Orlean

By Susan Orlean
Susan kicked off her book tour with us at Narrative.

NONFICTION

If I Owned a Gun

By Andre Dubus III
On the afternoon my father nearly killed me, his oldest son, we were installing new trigger guards on his guns.

NONFICTION

The Third Round

By Josip Novakovich
How do you redeem yourself after a murder? This man may have succeeded. Maybe he’d even saved lives.

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

First Place





Second Place





Third Place

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

First Place

The Profundities and Other Poems

By Maggie Millner
All day we had been dating, though it couldn’t last, the log raft of my lust already bumping on toward other shores.





Second Place

Not All of Us Get to Be Ghosts

By Leila Chatti
I’d like to be let go, after, like a balloon wafting toward heaven—but I don’t say it, can’t allow my absence the words.





Third Place

Another Poem with Deer in It

By Christie Towers
Because there isn’t a poem in America without deer in it, I send you photos from the road of their every possible crossing.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Sharing and
Other Poems

By John Freeman
In the mouth of Saint Sulpice two men, three women picnic away from the rain, a man in rags beside them sleeping.

POETRY

If the Shoe Fits and Other Poems

By Bob Hicok
They have a simple, uncomplicated message, and I long to be a simple, uncomplicated person.

POETRY

Death of a Dog and Other Poems

By Ted Kooser
For fifteen years our dog had held down what we had by pressing his belly to the floors.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

The Dream of Adoration and
Other Poems

By David Lee
The voice in the dream asked me what it was I wanted most of all.

POETRY

The Fine Arts and Other Poems

By Ursula K. Le Guin
I miss the many that I was, my lovers, my adventurers, the women I went with to the Pole.

POETRY

Richard II

By Rachel Mannheimer
You said I just seek tragedy but the arboretum website said November was a good time for appreciating bark.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Exaggerated Honey and Other Poems

By Elizabeth Metzger
I am not mother enough to tolerate creating my own heat, not human enough to gather close to what’s untouchable.

POETRY

Country

By Robin Myers
I love it in the way I love the first crushed fruits spooned into me before words and before choice: I can’t take them out of me and wouldn’t think to.

POETRY

After Closing Up My Mother’s House and Other Poems

By Sharon Olds
If I hadn’t been born, what if she could have become an opera star—and never gone flat!

POETRY

POETRY

iPOEMS

POETRY

An Elegy Beginning and Ending with
a Mouse

By Karisma Price
I won’t remember that little mouse, that furry fist of ears and eyes blacker than omission.

POETRY

This Sort of
Thing Happens
All the Time

By Maggie Smith
You see a forested mountain, and dusk is suddenly thick with words.

iPOEMS

Memory of a Season

By Henry Brooks
We ran along the risen bank of Dead Run, stopping on occasion to horse-kick at a sagging ledge and watch it slide.

PHOTOGRAPHY & ART

CARTOONS

CARTOONS

PHOTOGRAPHY & ART

Photos from
New Orleans

By Samuel Liebert
Without any intention or goal in mind, I photographed as a way to try to understand the city.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2018-10

By Various Artists
New art and humor from Felipe Galindo Gomez, Charlie Hankin, Navied Mahdavian, Victoria Roberts, and Julia Suits.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2018-09

By Various Artists
New laughs from John Klossner, Mary Lawton, Mick Stevens, P. C. Vey, and Kim Warp.