Fiction/Nonfiction: fiction

  • The Name of the Game is Love by Karen Heuler

    Lucy signs up to be a tester for a personal android. This story is an exploration of human loneliness, connection and the unintended consequences of the ‘move fast and break things’ approach. Heuler’s writing is so absorbing, the story grabbed me right away. It felt a little like a prequel to Annie Bot. I spent…

  • Long Game by Michelle Ross

    A very short story about a grandmother’s legacy with a surprising premise: After the funeral, my father sends me a one-minute timer, the small, plastic kind used in board games, only it’s not filled with fine, white sand but lumpy flecks of gray. Her idea, the note reads.

  • Lines Left by Katie ten Hagen

    A short ghost story that left me a mess. My dad mowed the lawn every Saturday morning—weather permitting—for seventy-two years. Vacations were scheduled around it, plans turned down, brunches skipped, because that lawn wasn’t gonna mow itself. When his heart started acting up, and I said maybe he could think about getting someone else to…

  • All Stories by Kevin Wilson

    The narrator of Wilson’s story is a lonely, depressed college student who attempted suicide when he was younger and has stopped taking his meds. That doesn’t sound like the setup for a touching and memorable story, but this is one. One night, while I pretended to be asleep, facing the cinderblock wall of my dorm,…

  • Swine at the Trough by Brian D. Hinson

    I read this last week and chose not to share it as I felt kind of overwhelmed by it (when you read it, you’ll see why). But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since, so here it is. Hinson’s story is a dystopian one where the protagonist’s last resort to make ends…

  • Hula Hoops Were My Downfall by Clare Reddaway

    My dad used to tell me a story about his younger brother winning a bike by knowing the most yo-yo tricks. There was no actual contest, he’d never even used a yo-yo — he just wrote in with a list of tricks and was declared the winner. Clare Reddaway’s story about a couple of young…

  • Housemom by Hannah Gregory

    ‘Housemom’ is an excellent title for this story. The narrator’s mother is dying of cancer and the place will literally fall apart without her. Gregory’s characters feel like a real family — they love each other but maybe don’t like each other much. Things unravel in a sad, comic and very human way. Robbie is…

  • Anyway, I Wish You Well by S.A. Greene

    Greene’s very meta short story plays with language and contains some real surprises, I read it three times in a once I figured out what she was doing with it.  There’s an epiphany, an acceptance, a glint of hope or resistance somewhere, because that’s how stories should finish, so they say.  A crock of gold…

  • Life on Earth by Spencer Nitkey

    This is the first I’ve read from Nitkey (it won’t be the last, he’s published a lot). In ‘Life on Earth’, the narrator’s partner is dying while scientists are discovering life on other planets. I’ve been reading a lot of Ted Chiang recently, and the humanity and emotion in this story remind me of some…

  • Millions of Seashells by P.R. O’Leary

    ‘Millions of Seashells’ is a time travel story, sure, but it’s about regrets and second-guessing decisions. Phano is a new publication (started January 2025) and I think there’s gonna be more from that pub as well as O’Leary around here. One last ditch effort at redemption thirty years after the worst decision of my life.…