Fiction/Nonfiction: fiction

  • The Dog and the Giraffe by Ruth Brandt

    A story told from the perspective 9-year-old Cara, about getting used to a new family arrangement. Brandt channels the child’s point of view so well.

  • Unleashing the Dogs by Phebe Jewell

    All of the content warnings on this one, but it’s a doozy of a short read. First line: You tell yourself you won’t put the gun in your mouth while your mother is alive.

  • Liberations by Phebe Jewell

    A short, weird horror story that’s full of metaphors about aging and childhood that leave a lot to interpretation: For generations, the children of Malia’s town freed their animals during the annual Fall Festival before they started school. Some cried as they said goodbye, but most were like Max, Malia’s brother, who couldn’t wait to…

  • The Wizard of Ozempic by Amber Baird

    I don’t want to spoil any of this story. The narrator has an eating disorder and is looking for help with it, and then it gets absolutely wild. The narrator’s voice is so distinct and foreboding: Pizza, every kind: floppy New Yorks and Chicago casseroles and California thin crusts and midwestern squares with cured pork…

  • Now You See Him by Francesca Leader

    A story with footnotes for days, this is a story about a bad boyfriend that spirals out into all kinds of interesting directions. I could use a smoke before I go in—I mean, yeah, I knew what I was doing. Got pregnant on purpose. Knew I’d be aborting it and everything. But I’m no psycho!…

  • Ken & Sirina by K. A. Polzin

    A charming, sweet and sentimental story about an aging couple and their shorthand and in-jokes.

  • Lessons by Kevin Sterne

    My stepdad would throw knives at me. It was a like a reflexes thing, catching a fly with chopsticks. Character building, a boy’s first funeral. I learned to write my name with bandaged fingers. That’s how I became a lefty. Rick threw knives like a pitcher throwing long toss. It’s how I got these gnarly…

  • Cold Weather Protocol by Erin Striff

    The world that Striff builds in this story is vivid and terrifying. Having grown up in a place that gets brutal winters, she nails the atmosphere and feeling of the deep freeze. In this interview she mentions that she’s working on a set of stories linked to this one, which sounds terrific and dreadful.

  • The Ghost Coat by Catherine Lacey

    Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years, and her weird, dreamlike, off-kilter prose is cranked up to 11 in this short story. I’ve read it three times; each time another section stands out to me.  The curtains caught fire and he sat there staring at me…

  • Dreamer, Passenger, Partner by Colin Alexander

    A sci-fi story from the perspective of an AI custom-built to rehabilitate a criminal. It’s wildly original, and has a classic sci-fi feel to it.