The Fiction Issue 2013
'Kama Sutra' Spells You Can Use
Like many works of ancient literature, The Kama Sutra can be read a few different ways: you can view it as a window into the mind-set and customs of a long-departed culture, or you can take it to be a straightforward how-to guide to pretzel sex...
Bitches Be Writing: A History
The first important modern writer with a vagina emerged out of nowhere, with an exaggerated, hyperbolic diary she called Pride and Prejudice, written when she was just 21 years old. As a result, universities all over the place now have feminist...
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...
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...
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...
The Collectors
You know how you go to a barber school for a cheap haircut only to learn you'll be worse off than when you were before and you'll have to go to an expensive salon just to repair the damage? Well, take it from me, watch out for the dental schools.
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...
Employees of the Month
A. L. Major is a recent graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. She is currently working on her novel Dismantle the Sun. She won a Hopwood and the Geoffrey James Gosling Prize for her work.
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...