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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “My Parasite” by Gina Frangello
The thing about a well-developed setting is that in many ways it’s invisible: it’s hidden in a sentence that reveals a character’s flaw, it sits quietly beside an emotional truth, it’s the catalyst for...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Wake Turbulence” by Laurie Ann...
As a recent transplant to New York from Arizona, I’ve been a little obsessed with place lately—about what the landscapes of home show us when we live inside them versus when we’re removed, what...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Mort Naturelle” by Ricardo Nuila
For most of us, our bodies can be mysteries, but in Ricardo Nuila’s story “Mort Naturelle,” we find them painfully explained. Here’s what happens to a spleen when a parachute doesn’t deploy; here’s how...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Our Country” by Jill Schepmann
You know you’re reading something lovely when you come across a line in a story that makes you stop reading, get out a pen, and draw a dark line across the page. (And you know it’s exceptional if you...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Lost Caves of St. Louis”...
I’m not sure about anyone else, but I can remember feeling stuck as a kid. I was an impatient child (and now I’m an impatient adult). A summer then felt like an entire year. A two-hour trip to the...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Letters Between Tortoise and...
I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately, chaffing against my nine to five office job, weary of the routine and cadence of every week and weekend. It’s spring in New York, which doesn’t help, since all...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Other Kind of Magic” by...
Have I written about longing here yet? (I’m sure I have.) Every story is supposed to be stuffed to the gills with an aching desire, something pulling a character through the narrative whether they want...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Neighbors” by Jared Yates...
Last night I was talking to a few friends about a strange experience I had the other week—I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when I walked through the living room on my way...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Disappearance of Herman...
It’s not often that I cry a little while reading a short story. I’ve been known to cry at badly written episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, at the emotional conclusion of certain novels, and in the presence of...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Abingdon Square” by André Aciman
I’ve written before about the feeling you get when a story follows you. When you’ve put the book or journal down or you’ve turned off your computer and gotten up and gone back to the rest of your life....
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Entity” by Mira Mattar
If I think back to the best people I’ve known—those who were my favorites, who were most alluring, engaging, and alive, the personalities that took up space in the world—there’s not necessarily a...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Helpful Products for Family...
You guys, I gotta tell you: I’m a sucker for any story that plays with form. Send me your recipes-as-failed-date stories, your museum-tours-as-conspiracy plots, your PowerPoint-homework-as-family...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Devotion” by Dolly Laninga
I’ve been thinking a lot about history lately, and how the stories we tell ourselves about our lives shape who we are almost as much as actual events. What defines us? Where do we fit into a group?...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Spider Legs” by Danielle Lazarin
Sometimes a story seems to find you at the right moment. Last week I was talking to a friend about our preferences in fiction. After writing this column for most of a year, I’m beginning to get a...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Man Who Couldn’t Give It...
When I used to teach intro fiction classes, I noticed that students often turned in stories that featured omniscient third-person narrators, and I can remember doing this when I started writing...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Dream Scenes” by Renée K....
When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a dancer. Instead, I played softball and soccer—but that fascination with dance never really went away. So last week, when I found “Dream Scene” by Renée K....
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Operating System” by Carol...
This week after reading “The Operating System” by Carol LaHines, I tried to think of the last time I made a big mistake—or thought I did—and was forced to wait out the consequences. Our minds do...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “We Are Here Because of a...
In Issue 34 of Passages North, Karin C. Davidson introduces us to Tulsa, in her story “We Are Here Because of a Horse,” by writing that “Tulsa by night shines like a shattered gold watch.” I’ve arrived...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Creative Writing Instructor...
Last week I came into the office where I work, sat down, ate an enormous bagel, and laughed so hard that the guy sitting behind me wheeled his chair over to my desk and said, “What’s so funny?” I...
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The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Three Small Town Stories” by...
I’ve recently become friends with a new handful of people, and out of this group, one woman in particular. Then, over the last weekend, I got to see some old friends from grad school, and in talking...
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