Fiction
Bret Easton Ellis Reviews Your Novel, Part One - 'Regard' by Pablo D'Stair
The new movie The Canyons, written by Bret Easton Ellis, was partially funded through Kickstarter. By way of thanks, Ellis will be reviewing a select few of the donors' novels. Here we have the first of those reviews, of Pablo D'Stair's <i...
We Were Having an Experience
It’s rumored that a certain former president’s daughter is here, at the fair. When she appears with another young woman, we ignore the other woman and focus on her more famous companion’s face, hair, and clothes, as if to verify her identity and store...
What Your Favorite Writers Put in Their Mouths
Writers tend to be mum on what they are currently at work on, but what about a different, but still intimate, aspect to their creative routines—like what they eat? I asked a boatload of writers what they are having, or had, for lunch, on a random day...
Out of the Pens of Babes
Most writers have been honing their craft since they were old enough to think. In their early years, they produced the same adorable, odd pieces of writing you'd expect from kids who don’t understand the world. Here's a selection of unedited writing...
Malibu
We sat in the recliners. I ate the cheesecake and my uncle ate the carrot cake. We watched the end of a movie called While You Were Sleeping. Then my uncle emptied his colostomy bag, while I sent that cheesecake down the toilet. I drank some...
White Trash
I didn’t mean to make a baby with Scott in the closet, on ecstasy, the floor pulsing to the bass of the house music, strobe lights flickering through the crack under the door. Back rubs with agendas were happening everywhere. When I got pregnant, the...
Case Study 2: Recognition of the Self
When Christopher arrived for his first assessment he was not like a normal eight-year-old boy. When he spoke he used a fascinating mode of verbal communication, lacking the personal pronoun, and transposing “I” with “we.” “We want to go back to Lea...
Marie Calloway on Her New Novel and Being Called "Jailbait"
"I wondered if I should go into his apartment." That line opens Marie Calloway's debut novel, what purpose did i serve in your life. She does go in, and the following 240 pages are what happens next. Reviews and comments about Calloway’s novel...
Werewolf
Last night, when the party was winding down and the group gathered to play Werewolf, Claire’s feet and hands began to sweat. And yet she announced to Hal, just loud enough for the circle of players to hear, that she was scared to death of being chosen...
Candy with Knives
Candice took a lot of drugs, but it had been a very long time since any of them came without the approval of the DEA. Sometimes for fun she pinched her thumb and pointer finger together as if holding a joint, put them to her lips, and inhaled slowly...
Happiness
I suppose it was in Korea where I learned to be alone, which was why during the second year at home, I went to the retreat house to return to aloneness there. The house was so cold on the first night that the bottle of olive oil in the kitchen cabinet...
Recipe Corner
Here are some suggested dishes to accompany the stories in the 2013 Fiction Issue, directly from a few of the authors who wrote them.