We believe students and readers everywhere deserve a great and free modern library, inside of which they can get deliriously, entertainingly, profoundly lost. And found.

Stories

First & Second Looks
The Quincunx
by Charles Palliser
Long before I saw London I smelt it in the bitter smoke of the sea-coal.
Story of the Week
The Race Card
by Dennis McFarland
The features of the girl in the bathing suit suggest a mixed-race origin.
Fiction
The Rage of the Squat King
by Rick Bass
What would make a sane person want to watch such blood sport?
Spring Contest Winners
The Ravages of an Unloved Life
by Tryphena L. Yeboah
I wait for the one thing that will change my life to arrive in the mail.
Poetry
The Reader in Quarantine
by Sharon Olds
She could not remember what Past and Present stood for.
Poetry
The Recording Angel
by Carolyn Forché
Years they sought her, whose crew left on the water a sad Welsh hymn.
Story of the Week
The Red Dress
by Emma Brankin
“I hope the scumbag rots in jail,” he yelled into the quiet night.
Readers' Narratives
The Red Line Inbound, Six Miles from Boston
by Scott McCabe
Fiction
The Red Shoes
by Lavanya Vasudevan
The girl began to dance again, throwing her arms from side to side.
Story of the Week
The Red Studebaker
by Barry Gifford
If your father were here, he wouldn’t put up with your insolence.
Story of the Week
The Religious Experience
by Barry Gifford
“For the entire time I was there I couldn’t get that out of my head.”
Poem of the Week
The Reds
by Elizabeth Straus
The moment in your drunk when you become rich! A connoisseur.
Story of the Week
The Rembrandt
by Edith Wharton
One felt all the poor lady’s barriers were falling save her manner.
Fiction
The Rescue
by Joyce Carol Oates
By chance you saw. So much had become chance in your life.
Poetry
The Resemblance of the Enzymes of Grasses to Those of Whales Is a Family Resemblance
by Lisa Olstein
This morning I watched two elephants dance the boogie-woogie.
Readers' Narratives
The Residence Inn, Louisville, Colorado
by Craig Bueltel
Craig Bueltel
Story of the Week
The Return
by Patricia Sammon
He resumed his nightly practice of writing without being able to see.
Story of the Week
The Rickshaw Wallah
by Jeannie Tseng
He was last in Calcutta more than fifteen years ago, for his mother’s funeral. Han Ru feels something vaguely discomfiting, followed by a surge of recognition.
iStories
The Right Fielder
by Tom Lakin
Far below, the right fielder circles and stares, mitt raised to the sky.
smithfoto.jpg
Poem of the Week
The River
by Charlie Smith
He said, You have no brother. I didn’t know what he meant. I do now.
Poem of the Week
The River Merchant’s Answer to His Wife
by Tim Mayo
Each night I curl my body around a small piece of silence.
Fiction
The Rock
by Ann Beattie
She had a situation where she’d lost her driver’s license for speeding.
Nonfiction
The Romance of Elsewhere
by Lynn Freed
If you want to know what to write, ask yourself what obsesses you.
Fiction
The Rooms
by Susan Minot
In the rooms you picked up what you liked, like shells on a beach.
Poem of the Week
The Rose Window
by Rainer Maria Rilke
It swims for a while, but abandons itself, slips from its own grasp.
Spring Contest Winners
The Rotten Ones
by Terrance Manning Jr.
We chose to stay in the brutality of that night, even as the girls walked away.
Fiction
The Royal Reykjavík Sex Tour
by Scott Spencer
We were in a play about affection. We were in a play about sex.
Fiction
The Runaways
by Elizabeth Spencer
“Now, just what brought you down all this way?” they wanted to know.
Fiction
The Russian Tank Commander, the Capitalist, and the Cover Girl
by Josh Haven
“I’m in a Soviet tank in Siberia and I need to know if you know Nina Bowyer.”
Fiction
The Salaryman
by Krys Lee
It almost makes you cry, to know that you are no longer needed.