Author Description

Literary short stories by established and emerging writers. Brad Beauregard What's Kept "You're old enough to already know this," my grandfather said, "but things don't always work out. Sometimes you try as hard as you can, for as long as you can, and things just don't end up the way you want them to." Silas Dent Zobal The Hospital Evelyn said, Dick wants to know what you have been doing that Maddy had a stroke, and I said, Jesus Christ. She said, Dick says this might be some lifestyle thing, and I said, Put Dick on the phone, and she said, Hold on. Syed Ali Haider Scheherazade "We all believe in Jesus, but Muslims--like you and I--believe that Jesus was one step on the way to the prophet Muhammad." Edwin Rozic Specimen Cases He slammed on the brakes and we all lurched forward. There's a spot, he said in Croatian--he always spoke Croatian when driving or swearing--and then he maneuvered the car into a narrow swatch of curb. At his funeral years later, I remembered that he was an excellent parker. Any spot, he could park the car in one sweep. Kim Brooks A Man Escaped Then in October, a colder, grayer October than usual that year, two events colluded at the height of his malaise that forced him to take charge of his life. Matt Bondurant Interview by Lori Ann Stephens My basic strategy was to take the handful of actual historical truths that we had knowledge of, things that were documented in newspapers and court transcripts for example, and then use them as sort of points in constellation, connecting the dots to other events, trying to account for the space between in a dramatically interesting, historically possible way. Matthew Vollmer The Young Men of the Academy The particulars of our education would--years later--escape us. Eskers, gaskets, covalent bonds, and dependent clauses--the definitions and rules governing these concepts had trickled through the sieves of our minds. Mi