By Cote Smith The Movement started with Wendell.  He was the one who carved Tyrannosaurus Reg into the teacher’s desk, when all the other kids were kicking things around at recess.  I was the one who watched, then ran back to the blacktop and told the first teacher I saw. It was a cold grey [...]

By David Gordon They say there are no coincidences, that nothing in this world truly happens by accident. So perhaps, deep down, I really meant to show my penis to my entire class. After all, that one seeming mistake began the adventure that changed my life. Or maybe I just suck at computers. I only [...]

By Teddy Wayne My parents started fighting when I was five.  Or maybe I just became aware of it around then, began identifying the high-frequency notes of hostility in adult voices.  We quickly established a vicious triangle.  I would hear bickering behind what they thought was a closed door, would nudge my way into the [...]

By Amanda Eyre Ward Guests arrived from far and wide for the wedding of Phillip Grant and Catherine Pipa.  There was Daniels, Phillip’s friend from Exeter, who took a plane from Istanbul to JFK to Denver, a bus to Grand Junction, and then stood by Highway 39 with his thumb out until some hippie drove [...]

By Darin Strauss
Mack, a depressive New Yorker staring down 30, moves to Turkey after a great date with a woman visiting America from Istanbul. But his obsessive and depressive instincts return when he and Deniz overhear an argument at a restaurant, and disagree about what it means.

By Elizabeth Crane
Shane Mipod never imagined his memoir, a graphic novel called “Amen,” would land him a visiting professorship at a university. But if he had, he also wouldn’t have imagined that he’d be completely misunderstood by those who claimed to like his work the most.

By Joshua Henkin
It was 1974 and everyone was sure about something — Watergate, Vietnam, that Hank should follow his parents and grandparents to Harvard. But if Hank’s parents could get divorced, Hank, too, could make decisions for himself.

By Edward Schwarzschild
Claude was filled with regrets over the choices he made and how he raised his son after his wife died young. But when his son’s wife became pregnant with his first grandchild, would he make all the same mistakes again?

By Dallas Hudgens Detroit snow had grounded the flight; tiny flakes pouring like rain in the glow of the tarmac lights.  Pegi watched from her window seat, annoyed by the droning breaths of the woman sleeping behind her.  The noise was insistent, and she understood what it meant to tell her.  She should be studying [...]

By Monica Bergers I. Baptism When Mother died, Arlene was forced to choose between a fine burial with a nighttime vigil — where her mother’s closest friends would judge Arlene’s wrinkled dress and pudgy arms and her toothy smile (as if showing teeth meant happiness) — or a long-awaited trip to Italy where she could [...]

By Stephen Elliott
He wanted to attend his sister’s wedding. Really. Sort of. And then he got there.

By Holly Goddard Jones Ann’s old friend Theresa seems to have gone a bit crazy. She shows up on Ann’s doorstep after six — she promised when they made these plans that she’d arrive in time for lunch — and is bedecked in garb that Ann, in their fifteen years’ acquaintance, has never seen the [...]

By Alix Ohlin
Janet didn’t take Adam seriously in college — he was an artist, and she was headed to the corporate world — and it broke his heart. Years later, she was divorced and working as a consultant, and Adam was playing Williamsburg dive bars and working a job he didn’t care about. Guess whose company hired Janet to suggest “efficiencies”?

By Paul Griner Bumping slowly up the dirt driveway toward Clare’s house, dust swirling behind him into the blue air despite his caution, Buddy knew what Clare would say as soon as he got out of the car. “You’re late, Buddy, fifty minutes late.” She would say his name like that, italicized, as if having [...]

By Tom McAllister After the funeral, the Widow sneaks out the back door hoping to avoid the reporters, but they are already there, waiting for her. They charge when she steps outside, microphones thrust at her like daggers. They need quotes, the only things they care about are quotes, especially short quotes and pithy quotes, [...]

By Patrick Somerville The summer after my sophomore year of high school, my mother and I took a trip to Chicago to visit my brother James and to give my father time to move out of the house.  I knew what was happening; she hadn’t tricked me into going on vacation to give him time [...]

By Rebecca Curtis
The Witches were a dangerous place to take a boat, an even riskier place to swim, and not the best destination for a post-prom sail.

By Kyle Beachy The sun blazed upon the man standing among pedestrian traffic, wearing the faded green vest. He established eye contact early and nodded affably, and when a man and woman approached he spoke to them in the language he had practiced, hemmed into meaning by a belief he did not happen to share. [...]

By Jennifer S. Davis

Cecilia was riddled with cancer, didn’t have much longer to live, and knew her husband was having an affair with Rose. What Rose couldn’t understand was why Cecilia asked her to the house one afternoon before Christmas.

By Rachel Sherman In the restaurant, he watched his daughter, Tabitha, carefully. She looked like his wife when she was young – more so than she had before, he thought. He wondered if his absence, or if his wife’s consistent presence during the past few years, made this so. It seemed like a punishment. He [...]

By Jess Row
She had been warned not to behave this way in Bangkok. Not to pull the Lonely Planet guide out at the train station. Certainly not to go home with a strange man. But even when she disregarded those warnings, she never would have believed it was possible to fall into a situation as dangerous as this.