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

STORY OF THE WEEK

The Queen of Providence

By Jane Lancellotti

Queenie couldn’t look away. The Portuguesa was very pregnant. How many weeks until the baby dropped? Hard to tell. Something form-fitting beneath the dress, a girdle, made it difficult to know.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Desire Path

By Laetitia Keok

My love, there are more borders between us than there have been meaningful years. Can I say this? Beyond our childhood days, the history of knowing is comprised of insufficiencies.

FINAL MONTH TO ENTER

Deadline: Fri., Nov. 13, at 11:59 p.m., PST.

Open to all fiction and nonfiction writers. We’re looking for short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, all forms of literary nonfiction, and excerpts.

Please see the Guidelines.

NARRATIVE FIRSTS

Narrative Firsts

Publishing first-time authors, and introducing their work to readers across the globe, is one of our greatest pleasures. Here are some of the authors whose first works have appeared in Narrative.

POETRY

Sweeter

By Yong-Yu Huang

This is what passes for dreaming in the blue house, the decay of my good days. Again, the bowl of fruit awash in the creeping light.

POETRY

First Frost over Harvested Fields

By Ted Kooser

Too dark before dawn to see them, but out there are lakes of pale silvery starlight, from one shore
to another

NARRATIVE HIGH SCHOOL WRITING CONTEST

POETRY

NARRATIVE HIGH SCHOOL WRITING CONTEST

No, but I once got very close

By Michelle Li

I thought of shouting your name across the square. That was the year I kept talking to myself: I am good I am good I want to be loved. By you, I mean.

POETRY

Illicit

By Cate Lycurgus

touching you is a dash in the paragraph of not touching you fragment in the sentence of not seeing you seeing you is a colon amid clauses of not seeing

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

CARTOONS

NARRATIVE OUTLOUD

A Reading with Helen Gu and Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff reading his story "Bullet in the Brain" and Helen Gu reads her poem "Mooncakes" aloud.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2026-10

By Various Artists

Brand new cartoons by Suzy Becker, Kyle Bravo, David Gomberg, Mick Stevens, and Dan Misdea!

GRAPHIC STORIES

Some Things I Actually Would Like to Elevate . . .

By Tracey K. Berglund

Women are constantly encouraged to “Elevate” our careers, our lifestyles, our portfolios, our skin care regimens, our get-aways.

GRAPHIC STORIES

A Library Grows in the Bronx

By Ali Solomon

We used to visit with my grandfather in his Bronx apartment. His building's laundry room was like a little free library, only big and musty.

LEARN!

INTERVIEWS

LEARN!

Narrative 10

By Daniel Mason

Words you use most on the page? Obidicut, Hobbididence, Mahu, Modo, Smulkin, Swithold, Pillicock, Turlygod, Flibbertigibbet.

INTERVIEWS

Sarah Lao, Winner of the Sixth Annual High School Writing Contest, talks with Javier Zamora and Carol Edgarian

By Various Authors