The Premise I had graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from a fine Ivy League university, and I was looking for a job. The bills were piled on the right-hand side of my desk, and the ads for employment positions on the left-hand side. The bill pile was higher by a…
Her sister loved pepper on everything. Just a little bit more, she’d say, while the waiter stood there, resentful and impatient, twisting the cumbersome wooden mill over and over again, waiting to be released. For Anna, pepper was a take-it-or-leave it spice. Anna loved salt. She loved everything about it: its purity, its texture—the way…
In fiction, our winner is Susan Bartolme, for her piece “Because It’s Yours.” This year’s fiction judge was Dantiel W. Moniz. Of the short story, she writes: “A tender and biting depiction of girlhood and the itchiness of assuming a self through the perceived gaze of others. Full of embodied, sensory details I could feel…
I. In the women’s hospital, past the arch of glass and stone, a grand piano played day and night. All the presidents and the vice presidents loved it. The parking attendants hated it. The rest of the hospital—the doctors and the nurses, the physician assistants and the scrub techs, the billers and the coders, the…
When I started my summer internship at Bible House, I was assigned to the Kids’ Corner exhibits even though I told them up front I didn’t have a heart for children. I hadn’t liked kids much even when I was one myself. Growing up had been a relief. The supervisors at Bible House see a…
What has stayed happened long ago, but Milty can’t remember reaching for his quad cane this morning. On the kitchen table where he sits are the notes he’s written to himself. His handwriting looks like it was done by some old drunk, and they’re yellow sticky notes that Donna bought for him, which he only…
For Alan J. Singerman, in token of friendship Murakami Harukidesu. I am Murakami Haruki. My novels have been translated all around the world, and when the latest one comes out, my readers line up all night to buy it as soon as possible—my books are as eagerly awaited as a Beatles album when I was young….
Janelle is my oldest friend, but the word “friend” is outdated. We are sitting in a diner that smells of old oil and toxic cleaning solution. My personal chef prepared a salmon benedict an hour before we got on the road, which Janelle refused before plopping down on an antique divan and barely looking at…
Last week, unfortunately on one of the evenings when Haseeb was home in time for dinner with me and the children, the watchman informed us that Mariam had died. Haseeb was annoyed on two accounts: one, that Mariam’s brother was outside and demanded to speak to me; two, that I hadn’t listened to his advice…
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