Grief Stories

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Howler” by LaTanya McQueen
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The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Howler” by LaTanya McQueen

ByRoss McMeekin

In modern society, what often constitutes progress is the dulling elimination of those instinctual parts of our being that aren’t beholden to conscious thought—say, our hard-wired physical and emotional responses. In “The Howler” (Permafrost) LaTanya McQueen explores the potentially redemptive nature of those impulses that lay beyond our control.

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The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Brought to Shore” by Nicholas Olson

ByRoss McMeekin

Patients with terminal conditions face many difficulties outside of the symptoms themself. In “Brought to Shore” (SmokeLong Quarterly), Nicholas Olson explores a family struggling through the emotional realities of a parent living on borrowed time. Olson opens the story with a memory of a camping trip with the narrator’s unnamed father and brother. “When I…