Fiction

A solo cover of a pile of broken pieces blue, red, gold, and green ceramics

A History of China (Solo 5.4)

Dixie Every year at the family reunion—before Cousin Monique comes to your rescue—the uncles sit back in their folding chairs and napkin-necks and ask about your father. They take you in with age-soggy eyes, as you stand before them in a floppy blouson and skirt. You look different now than you did in 1970 or…

A solo cover of an abstract painting of a cave with orange and white text

Koppargruva (Solo 5.2)

(novel excerpt from Peace at Last) “M. Nobel, the reputed inventor of nitroglycerine, has been visiting this and the other copper mines for the purpose of introducing this powerful explosive agent. M. Nobel assured Captain Stevens that by this compound the great masses of copper, upon which gunpowder has no effect, can be sundered.” —Travel…

Eye Blister

Translated by Kari Dickson She has to get the asylum seeker back to the church. She found him wandering around in the woods behind the church, he’d had enough, he tried to tell her in a language she couldn’t understand, but she knew that was what he was trying to say, all the same; he…

A solo cover with the title written onto a drawing of a jam jar

Beach Plum Jam (Solo 4.9)

A sudden gust of wind blew strands of Polly Stillman’s brown hair across her face, obscuring her view of the late afternoon sun on Hatch’s Bay. No matter, she didn’t see a composition anyway. In past summers, this scene usually inspired a painting—of beach grass shadows slashing the bright dunes; of a large rock, encrusted…