Fiction/Nonfiction: fiction

  • Swordfish Strips by Michael Brooks

    Swordfish Strips is told by a server at a swanky restaurant, as she low-key obsesses about a fashionable couple at one of her tables. The story surprises, and Brooks captures so many subtle details that are revealing about each character. Emily spots her strutting up to the hostess stand: a willowy curl of a woman,…

  • The Life of the Mother by Susan Perabo

    This story shook me. The steady reveals and rising tension result in a story about a woman’s pregnancy that’s unforgettable. Following the meeting with the doctor, there was no thought of a baby shower. Too much rage. Too much grief. The two were indistinguishable, separate ropes twisted into a single noose. Bullshit about stages of grief,…

  • An Apology to the Drive Thru Bank Teller I Robbed Accidentally by Tracie Adams

    This has the momentum of a freight train. The first sentence hooked me and the last left me stunned. I turned the steering wheel with sweaty palms as I exited the bank parking lot. My heart, an inmate pounding on bars, thumped against my rib cage. I drove straight home to my studio apartment, conscious…

  • Shuttlecock by Camara S. Garrett

    “Remind me later to tell you something,” Steffi said. With that first line, Garrett starts slowly cranking up the tension in the relationship between the narrator and his girlfriend Stephanie. This story kept surprising until the last line.

  • The Birthday Clown of Your Queer Fantasy by Kristen Arnett

    A raunchy, hilarious and unforgettable excerpt from Kristen Arnett’s new book Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One. I’ve entertained an entire backyard full of people with nothing but a wooden spoon and a cast-iron pan as accompaniment, drumming the theme from The Brady Bunch while simultaneously dancing a jig. I’ve landed a somersault on a Slip…

  • Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett

    An excerpt from Arnett’s novel of the same name. This is a bizarre and hilarious story about a somewhat sinister, adulterous lesbian clown. Dwight had already seen me perform back when I was first starting out. He’d liked it fine, he’d said, but it wasn’t exactly his thing. That I understood—my big brother was never…

  • A Machine-Shaped Hand by ChatGPT

    To be clear, this story is fucking terrible. This is notable only because so many people think it’s proof of something. The fact that tech bros think this is good writing is more evidence why they’re engineers and not writers. It’s like that guy in high school that insisted on reading you his poetry. Like…

  • The Tugwort by Lincoln Michel

    An engaged couple is planning a wedding, but the bride-to-be suffers from panic attacks. Michel is so good at making that feeling seem real and relatable, Every so often, Carla would feel a painful sensation in her chest, as if some angry creature was being born there. This creature would unfurl its burning limbs. A…

  • All and Sundry by Candace Leigh Coulombe

    All and Sundry is told in the second person about losing a child in a huge retail store. Like galactically huge. Then things get interesting. Do not let your children stand in the shopping cart. Do not let them ride in the bottom of the cart, where pigtails or small hands could get trapped in…

  • The Jims by Charlie Rogers

    This is a weird one and I don’t want to spoil anything. It’s about clones:  I hope Jim-Prime is asleep, so he can’t ruin this like he usually does. But no. The door creaks behind me—an irritating noise that Jim-Prime keeps asking me to fix, like he can’t figure out how to operate a can…