Search Results for: fiction

Joyce Carol Oates Goes Home Again

Longreads Pick

The celebrated writer returns to the town of her birth to revisit the places that haunt her memory and her extraordinary fiction

Source: Smithsonian
Published: Mar 1, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,174 words)

All That

Longreads Pick

Once when I was a little boy I received as a gift a toy cement mixer. It was made of wood except for its wheels—axles—which, as I remember, were thin metal rods. I’m ninety per cent sure it was a Christmas gift. I liked it the same way a boy that age likes toy dump trucks, ambulances, tractor-trailers, and whatnot. There are little boys who like trains and little boys who like vehicles—I liked the latter. (Fiction)

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 14, 2009
Length: 15 minutes (3,968 words)

Max at Sea

Longreads Pick

Max knew that a bunk bed was the perfect structure to use when building an indoor fort. First of all, bunk beds have a roof, and a roof is essential if you’re going to have an observation tower. And you need an observation tower if you’re going to spot invading armies before they breach your walls and overtake your kingdom. Anyone without a bunk bed would have a much harder time maintaining a security perimeter, and if you can’t do that you don’t stand a chance. (Fiction)

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Aug 24, 2009
Length: 30 minutes (7,506 words)

Good Neighbors

Longreads Pick

In the earliest years, when you could still drive a Volvo 240 without feeling self-conscious, the collective task in Ramsey Hill was to relearn certain life skills that your own parents had fled to the suburbs specifically to unlearn, like how to interest the local cops in actually doing their job, and how to protect a bike from a highly motivated thief, and when to bother rousting a drunk from your lawn furniture, and how to encourage feral cats to shit in somebody else’s children’s sandbox, and how to determine whether a public school sucked too much to bother trying to fix it. (Fiction)

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jun 8, 2009
Length: 36 minutes (9,131 words)

New Voices

Longreads Pick

Granta.com’s New Voices series showcases original fiction from emerging writers. The latest story in this series is ‘Dragon Island’ by Laura Fellowes.

Source: Granta
Published: May 6, 2009
Length: 13 minutes (3,262 words)

People Like Me

Longreads Pick

(Fiction) “Lanie’s at her brother’s. She wants me to go to anger management.”

Published: May 1, 2009
Length: 35 minutes (8,943 words)