From a modern young Iraqi’s suffering at the hands of his polygamist father to a post–Civil War barroom in Natchez, where a snake oil salesman plies his trade; and from a lovelorn man’s odyssey with his sister across rural Japan, seeking family solace, to the comeuppance and shame handed to a French orphan who slept with Nazis in order to survive; and finally to a Korean immigrant couple whose long-married life in New Jersey reaches back to a tragic past with a determined belief in the future, the five stories here range wide and run deep. We’re grateful to be able to highlight these remarkable pieces and their authors. Enjoy!
The Story of the Week series for 2019–2020 starts on September 23. If you would like to send a story for consideration as a Story of the Week, please see our Guidelines. Each September the Top Five Stories of the Week are selected for special notice.
Yoon Choi
The Church of Abundant Life
2022 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize
Abigail DeWitt
Shorn
Whoring teaches you how to act. I told myself the boy was my son.
Sacha Idell
A Shrine at the Inn
“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” I said. “It’s kind of a family emergency.”
Dena K. Mohammad
A Son of Baghdad
My parents were wed for six years before my father took a second wife.
Courtney Marcelo Norton
Snake Oil
Here is the mark, right in front of him: a gouty judge with a big purse.
