[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 […]
fiction
Posted inUncategorized
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, […]
Posted inUncategorized
[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 […]
Posted inUncategorized
[Fiction] On Wednesday afternoon, between the geography lesson on ancient Egypt’s hand-operated irrigation system and an art project that involved drawing a model city next to a mountain, our fourthgrade teacher, Mr. Hibler, developed a cough. This cough began with a series of muffled throat-clearings and progressed to propulsive noises contained within Mr. Hibler’s closed […]
Posted inUncategorized
[Fiction] Mother comes back one evening and she starts up at supper about feng shui, how our house isn’t organized for a happy life, how the front door should never line up with the back door like ours does – never. One of her colleagues in Parks and Recreation told her that. They’re all dipshits […]
Posted inUncategorized
[Fiction] Mother comes back one evening and she starts up at supper about feng shui, how our house isn’t organized for a happy life, how the front door should never line up with the back door like ours does – never. One of her colleagues in Parks and Recreation told her that. They’re all dipshits […]
Posted inUncategorized
[Fiction] Grit was dead. There was no mistake about that. And on the very day of his burial temptation came to his widow. Grit’s widow was “Great” Taylor, whose inadequate first name was Nell—a young, immaculate creature whose body was splendid even if her vision and spirit were small. She never had understood Grit. Returning […]
Posted inUncategorized
[Fiction] When Grace goes looking for the Traverses’ summer house, in the Ottawa Valley, it has been many years since she was in that part of the country. And, of course, things have changed. Highway 7 now avoids towns that it used to go right through, and it goes straight in places where, as she […]
Posted inUncategorized
[Fiction] I had my corner. Right across the street, beside the subway stairs. Where the office men come up early with their crisp hats and their stiff collars, with their shoes dusty and scraped from the crowds. That’s where I met them every morning with my rags and brushes. Pesterton Polish, el el see. Second […]
Posted inUncategorized
[Fiction] “It just doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I mean, my sisters get pregnant looking at a cologne ad. They get pregnant in pollen season.” For six months they had been trying to conceive, and still her period was as regular as the tide. She decided to see a doctor. He told her it would […]