Mud Season Review
Watchtower
By Shane Inman
Right after it happened, I assumed I’d always remember the look on Ethan’s face the moment just before the ice swallowed him. But a decade was a long time and cast shadows on old memories…
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Portrait of a Marriage as a Young Thing
By Kathryn Ordiway
When it’s trying, Liv reminds herself that everyone says the first year is the hardest. This helps. She imagines the three hundred and sixty-sixth day of their marriage as a rosy winter day, fresh snow on the ground…
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Kathrin Hutson interviews
Jacqueline Vogtman
Fiction co-editor Kathrin Hutson recently had this exchange with Issue #45 featured fiction author Jacqueline Vogtman. Here’s what Jacqueline had to say about balancing ambiguity and clarity when crafting a story, how she chooses a point of view, what she’s working on now, and more…
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Girl Country
By Jacqueline Vogtman
The farmer was driving a deserted county road in the early darkness of fall when he found the girl. He was on the way home from burying his wife. His brother sat in the passenger seat, and it was he who spotted the girl first: a shape moving on the side of the road…
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Grace Safford interviews
Claire Robbins
Fiction co-editor Grace Safford recently had this exchange with Issue #44 featured fiction writer Claire Robbins. Here’s what Claire had to say about form in fiction, writing complex relationships, her approach to revision, and more…
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This is How You Get Off Food Stamps
By Claire Robbins
1. First you will need to get on them. This is easy: move out of your mother’s house, live in a patched green army tent on the wrong side of town. Get pregnant. Forget who the father of your unborn child was but remember the shape of his nose…
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Kathrin Hutson interviews
Carley Gomez
Fiction co-editor Kathrin Hutson recently had this exchange with Issue #43 featured fiction writer Carley Gomez. Here’s what Carley had to say about her inspiration for writing fiction, her early attempts at writing, what she’s working on now, and more…
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What Does a Nine Year-Old Know?
By Carley Gomez
“I’m a lesbian,” Tim’s nine-year-old daughter Sammy told him. She had a ponytail and a loose tooth that she flicked over her lip with her tongue as they stood in the aquarium in front of a tank of seahorses…
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Kathrin Hutson interviews
Stanley Delgado
Fiction co-editor Kathrin Hutson recently had this exchange with Issue #42 fiction author Stanley Delgado. Here’s what Stanley had to say about his inspiration for “Pool,” his approach to revision, how his work as a translator for medical journals overlaps with his fiction writing, and more…
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Pool
By Stanley Delgado
Mom told Wendel it was like swimming in saliva, it was so warm; he would love it—absolutely love the pool. She knew he was on summer vacation, so he couldn’t say no…
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Grace Safford interviews
Nathan Alling Long
Fiction co-editor Grace Safford recently had this exchange with Issue #41 featured fiction writer Nathan Alling Long. Here’s what Nathan had to say about his approach to teaching writing, his favorite stories of 2018, and what he’s working on now…
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Last Sympathy
By Nathan Alling Long
SANUS DREAMT a bomb exploded just outside his apartment building. He heard the detonation, then saw the window shatter, the ceiling crumble, and debris scatter across the floor. He lay there naked, feeling the dust settled on his skin…
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Grace Safford interviews
Joe Baumann
Fiction co-editor Grace Safford recently had this exchange with Issue #40 featured fiction writer Joe Baumann. Here’s what Joe had to say about his approach to brainstorming story ideas, what role exposition plays in a piece, and what he’s working on now…
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Vernix
By Joe Baumann
The neonatal nurses couldn’t remove the vernix from Evan’s skin. They tried hot water, scrubbing with their hands through the squeaky latex of their gloves; they soaked washcloths, scratching them against his pink baby body, at first with a delicacy reserved for afternoon tea…
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How It Ends
By Rosanna Staffa
Stiff chairs, pens scratching. We sat at a large table, budding playwrights in summer clothes and fresh haircuts. The mentor looked tiny and mysterious, with beautiful black hair and delicate skin. I was afraid of her. She was terribly smart and famous…..
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Grace Safford interviews
Sarah Freligh
Fiction co-editor Grace Safford recently had this exchange with Issue #38 featured fiction author Sarah Freligh. Here’s what she had to say about her best and worst workshop experiences, character development, her writing routine, and more….
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Next of Kin
By Sarah Freligh
Richard Nixon is dying. The radio in Sophie’s car burps to life with this news, then mysteriously quits. A short in the electrical system, according to her brother Kevin, something tricky and too expensive to bother with in a car this old….
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Kathrin Hutson interviews
Casey Lefante
Fiction co-editor Kathrin Hutson recently had this exchange with Issue #37 featured fiction author Casey Lefante. Here’s what she had to say about employing the second-person point of view, writing about politics, her revision process, and more….
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Honey Bee
By Casey Lefante
You lift your scalpel, stare at the speck in front of you. You feel kind of bad for it. One minute, it’s living its life in a sweet little colony, making honey and shit, and the next minute, it’s dropped unceremoniously onto a tin plate for a fifteen-year-old to dissect…
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Lauren Bender interviews
Florence Sunnen
Former editor-in-chief Lauren Bender interviews fiction author Florence Sunnen about how she creates the characters in her stories, her literary influences, her experiences as an MFA student and more…Read more
Grace Safford interviews
Jillian Merrifield
Our fiction editor Grace Safford recently had this exchange with Jillian Merrifield, our Issue #36 featured fiction author. Here’s what she had to say about her writing and revision process, workshops and creative writing pedagogy, and the inspiration for her short story “Here, There Be Dragons”… Read more
Here, There Be Dragons
By Jillian Merrifield
Dana and I are on this party’s shitlist, I can tell, and I’m pretty sure that it’s mostly about me. The host is the building manager of the high rise that Dana works in downtown, and he was so pissed to see that she’d brought an unsolicited male plus-one…
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Lauren Bender interviews
Emily Alice Katz
Our editor-in-chief Lauren Bender recently had this exchange with Emily Alice Katz, our Issue #30 featured fiction author. Here’s what she had to say about her writing process, the joy of being part of a writing community, and the inspiration behind her short story “The Italian Dance”… Read more
Lauren Bender interviews
Constance Renfrow
Our editor-in-chief Lauren Bender recently had this exchange with Constance Renfrow, our Issue #34 featured fiction author. Here’s what she had to say about her revision philosophy, her inspiration for “The Lady of the House,” and the balance of talent versus hard work in writing… Read more
Laura
By Florence Sunnen
I wake up to the phone ringing, and the sun wedges itself between my lids. I peel my cheek off the notebook page I fell asleep on. The ringing comes from underneath a pile of clothes. The light is deep; it is the afternoon. I dig around for the phone and answer…
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