Fiction/Nonfiction: fiction

  • CLUSTER by Katherine Plumhoff

    Perennial fave Plumhoff writes about Laura who just lost her mother: People say they see their dead moms in blue jays and buttercups, robins and rhododendrons, but mine told me she’d never come back as something so abominably dull, and to keep an eye out for spiders. It’s a bit Tim Burton, and it’s lovely.

  • Another Night in Pittsburgh by Mark Ifanson

    Roger and his friends get into the cocaine business and things, well, don’t go as planned: It was a simple plan, like they say in those movies I can never remember the name of. Jules and Jason and me, well, we weren’t totally straight when we came up with this, but it sounded good, and…

  • I Don’t Know What Wind Is by Chris Scott

    Approximately thirty seconds before dismissal, one of my first graders asks me what wind is. I freeze up, sixteen first grade faces watching me, they all suddenly want to know what wind is, right now, right this moment. I’m 41 years old, and I honestly have no idea.  This story isn’t about wind, and I…

  • Julian by Nathan Leslie

    A retired restaurant critic with health issues comes back for one special meal. It sounds lovely: Dragon’s breath chili, blood clams, casu marzu cheese, nomura’s jellyfish, apple seeds, even fugu and sannakji, the raw, still moving octopus tendrils. I was queasy reading this. Perfectly executed.

  • Landline by Kelly Robson

    This story unfolds like a film in the style of Locke. A teacher is headed off on a class trip to London when her six-year-old son calls, alone and scared. My palms were sweating as I read this. “It’s dark,” Liam said, his soft, little-kid voice barely audible over the crackle of the landline. “Daddy’s…

  • Median by Kelly Robson

    It starts with a PSW’s car breaking down in the median of the highway. Not only can Carla not reach 911, she starts to receive mysterious and distressing calls herself. Her phone rang. “Hello,” she yelled. A kid’s voice: “They’re fighting. He’s hurting my mom. Again.”

  • Zen by Kevin Light-Roth

    His truck repossessed by a bail bondsman, a reluctant teenage boy attempts to track down his wanted mother. It’s the first story published at T&W, and it’s a barnburner.

  • The Way The Service Works by Alex DiFrancesco

    It’s a time travel story, but the author has a lot to say about AI and the value and nature of art and creativity. I needed proof that it wasn’t sickness, it wasn’t folly, there was something real and human in me, something that all the reason in the world couldn’t reason away. But that…

  • 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.