When I was six and my uncle was twenty-four, he did something that you can’t do anymore—he took me to a racetrack across the river called Cahokia Downs. That was where I saw horses for the first time—it was 1955, and we didn’t have a television yet, so I never watched Roy Rogers or My…
It was the memory of Ms. Musavi’s arrogant eyebrows, rising up toward her chador like two sideways parentheses, that made Amir lift a hand to strike his twelve-year-old daughter for the first time. Amir and his wife, Seema, had never hit their children, not even a light slap of the hand when chubby fingers reached…
I was deep in my email when my son came up behind me at my desk. He had a question, I could tell. Still typing, I tilted my head his way. What name would you pick? he said. If you could pick a different name. For myself? He nodded. Well. I’ve always liked the name…
Then the Muhheconneok, people of the ever-flowing waters, are killed, or tricked, or forced east to Stockbridge. The land, hardly bought, is leased to Dutch tenant farmers who curse their lords when they find the spring fields full of stones. Some of the children survive, and some even live long enough to see the merchants…
She caught a glimpse of her eyes on the screen and felt they held the fact that she’d finally found the very thing the internet had been invented for, like she had arrived, and this was it. But it wasn’t; it was just that her eyes were wide from losing focus and watery from wear….
Evenings I meet Angelo in the parking lot behind Whataburger to get high. This has become such a ritual that we don’t even talk about it anymore. We just meet up in the same spot right behind the dumpster, a small patch of creosote bushes that shield us from any onlookers. It used to be…
In fiction, our winner is Mengyin Lin, for her story “野火烧不尽/no prairie fire can destroy all the weeds.” Of the story, fiction judge Gish Jen says, “This gutsy and ambitious story nimbly ranges over five cities worldwide, chronicling the 2022 protests to China’s COVID-19 policies—a project fraught with not only political risks but artistic risks,…
Diana forgets the second half of her line as Emily Webb, distracted by the puffy sleeves of her costume, an otherwise unobjectionable 1930s “day dress” printed with tiny blue roses and belted at the waist. She swats at one bloated shoulder, wishing she could find the gravestone of the genius who came up with this…
Whenever Susan Bridge heard friends or family talk of inklings from the other side, or of being watched over by a lost loved one, she inwardly dismissed the idea even as she strove to be loving and attentive in the circumstance. She felt sorry, of course, but considered that in each case, bereavement was dictating…
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