Each story we chose as our number five piece of the week in 2023, all in one place.
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Ten Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2024
For the tenth year in a row, we’re kicking off the reading year with a set of short stories hand-picked by longtime contributor Pravesh Bhardwaj.
Shifting Identity, Shamans, and the Week’s Top 5
“So long as there are nations, there will be people trying to get out of them, tracking ceaselessly from one to the other while maybe wishing they could belong to the world instead.” In making a cross-country move recently, I realized that I can be a different person in a new place. There’s a certain […]
Rabbit Holes Aplenty and the Week’s Top 5
“What could have fizzled out as a weekend infatuation turned into a full-blown obsession, an online epic quest. After the festival, I decided that a dulcimer was something I really needed, but I never just need things; I also crave learning about them deeply from the people who already know.” Who among us has never fallen into […]
This Week: Rituals, Emoji, and a Cold Case
“Ritual is an urge and an act; it’s an aesthetic gesture. As an adult I established the habit of turning my attention to those subtle seasonal details and recording them. I was loving and honoring the land, but this practice still left something undone. A certain clarity, maybe formality. Something like a frame around a […]
On Learning Love and Compassion, and the Week’s Top 5 Stories
“The way forward had to be with open eyes and with hearts exposed to injury. We’d seen the price we paid when we failed to bear witness.” Hello, weekend, c’mon in! The light is slowly returning to the Northern Hemisphere, and with it the promise of brighter days ahead. First up, Amory Rowe Salem writes […]
Odes to the Heart and the Week’s Top 5
“There is something about the heart. It beats until it doesn’t. I don’t give or withhold permission. To live my life is to accept—in this one, life-giving ongoingness that occurs right at the heart of me—that I am not the center of this story.” August is just around the corner, and as we fly through the year […]
Predator or Prey
“I still want to feel each meal, each touch, each body I absorb into mine.”
A banger of a Christmas story, best of 2023, and more
“I have enjoyed many happy Christmases and plenty of disappointing ones, like the one I spent eating alone at a Waffle House due to an ice storm, or the Christmas my father accused all the unmarried relatives of being gay. But of all the sad Yuletides of my life, the one I spent guarding $100,000 […]
Award-Winning Writer Mayukh Sen Shines A Light On Food’s Hidden Figures
“Sen’s new book, Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America, which is out on November 16, is an extension of this mission. Sen profiles seven women—“seven immigrants who used food to construct an identity outside their home country,” as he describes them—and explores why the stories of these women and their achievements […]

