Fiction/Nonfiction: fiction

  • You’re Supposed to be a Big Girl, Virginia by Kate Arnold

    A little girl has concerns about an old woman in a creepy house on the walk to school. It’s the tiny details in this story that make it feel so real. The pet names, Ginny calling her mother by her first name for a spell (and the echoes of it later in the story), the…

  • So We Sat in the Parking Lot and Laughed About Death by Michelle Drozdick

    This story just took me out. I was a sniffling mess on the train. The combination of heartbreak and humour in this story is unforgettable. My grandmother was in the backseat, tucked away neatly inside my mother’s tote bag. We hit a bump and a corner of the bag tilted downward, revealing the tiniest peek…

  • 3/1 Walking Distance from Packard’s Corner (Great Investment) by Marco Visciolaccio

    I feel like every story about a creepy apartment I read winds up here. I love how the narrator of the story slowly reveals more about his own psychological state. It’s not worth knowing what’s inside the wall. The thing’s brick and I’m not made of money, especially not after buying a home. The knocking…

  • 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…