[Fiction] Pepa’s not afraid of anything: For two weeks, her parents were gone, and during this time Pepa took care of her brother as she did when they were not in the jungle. She prepared meals. She went to the market and mopped the floors and fed the chickens, of course. She made sure that […]
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[Fiction] The story of a couple’s life, in 11 places: They stand on a rock ledge beside the shore, boy and girl, leaning together, their bare shoulders touching, as the adults unfold and arrange cots. Her father watches them as he sips from his bottle, though, and he knows what the night means. He calls […]
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[Fiction] A trip from the Jersey Shore to jail: My usual connection wasn’t by the pier on the beach. It started to rain, so I pulled my shirt over my head and ducked under the pier. It stank like hell under there, like fish guts and piss. Thunder boomed and the sky tore open. It […]
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[Fiction] A car stops at a light and never leaves: You saw him first. Of course you did. Back then, when you were six, you spent most of your time at the window looking down on the street. What else were you going to do when Mama fought with Johnny? The apartment was not that […]
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[Fiction] A marriage and its outside interferences: When she told her husband that David Cannon had arranged for her a series of recitals in South America, she looked to him for swift response. She was confident that anything touching on her professional life would kindle his eye and warm his voice. It was, in fact, […]
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[Fiction] A family of children escape starvation in North Korea: The day the siblings left to find their mother, snow devoured the northern mining town. Houses loomed like ghosts. The government’s face was everywhere: on the sides of a beached cart, above the lintel of the post office, on placards scattered throughout the surrounding mountains […]
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[Fiction] A young boy plays with the truth as he skips school one day: Your stepfather walks toward you. He takes your chin in his thumb and forefinger, and turns your face back and forth, as though it were a piece of merchandise he was thinking about buying. “You must have fallen pretty easy,” he […]
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[Fiction] A couple, and a writing workshop: Her third story started out funny. It was about a woman who gave birth to a cat. The hero of the story was the husband, who suspected that the cat wasn’t his. A fat ginger tomcat that slept on the lid of the dumpster right below the window […]
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Instafiction's Jeremy Bushnell: My Top Fiction Longreads of 2011
Jeremy P. Bushnell is the editor-in-chief of Instafiction.org, which links to a quality short story each weekday. He stockpiles many other links at his blog, Raccoon. He’s also on Twitter. *** “Backbone,” David Foster Wallace (The New Yorker) During his lifetime, David Foster Wallace made massive contributions to the worlds of fiction and nonfiction alike, […]
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[Fiction] He told her that she was moving too much, that she had to stay stiller, the camera was finicky, the exposures depended on no motion, like just stop breathing, he said looking at the playback, just stop breathing, okay. Lindsay thought it was a joke and laughed but he said it was serious, this […]