“When West Branch invited me to be a guest editor, I told Josh I wanted the story if it was still free. This time, to my absolute delight, it was.”
Patrick Thomas Henry
Seven Flock the Transom: From the Wire Reports On the morning that Chet Alpine publishes his list “Six Surprising Birds That Will Fuck You Up,” the editors of TrendWire email us about an impending financial crisis. “As you know,” the note reads, “ad revenue has declined, and YouTube has again altered their monetization policy. This […]
Jehanne Dubrow
You Must Stumble The memorials are made of concrete and covered in brass. Each one is the size and shape of a small cobblestone, measuring 96 by 96 millimeters. They’re called stolpersteine in German. Stumbling stones. Gunter Demnig first conceived of the stolpersteine in the early 1990s. As Kirsten Grieshaber recounts in The New York […]
Naomi Kanakia
“These days, all stories need to be adventure stories.”
Sarah Heying
Sarah Heying is currently working on a PhD in Oxford, MS. She received her MFA from McNeese State University, and her short stories have previously appeared in The Greensboro Review, Broken Pencil, Kestrel, and elsewhere.
Carolyn Zaikowski
Carolyn Zaikowski is the author of the novels In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and A Child Is Being Killed (Aqueous Books, 2013.) Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared widely, in such publications as Washington Post, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, PANK, DIAGRAM, Huffington Post, and Everyday Feminism. She holds an MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Find her online at www.carolynzaikowski.com.
Andrés Reconco
La Creel My mother was obsessed with soap operas and pan dulce. One day, after my photo shoot, I went to a panadería she likes. It’s a Cuban place with little sweet breads stuffed with guava and cheese. I hadn’t planned on visiting her, but the photoshoot went well and it’s still early. My mom […]
Case Q. Kerns
Protected Land My share of the morsel should have lasted for at least a week or two keeping me nice and steady— two or three days if I really wanted to get drenched and lose my feet. I needed to float away for a little while before I could even begin to think about what […]
Lillian Cummins
First Hot, dry Friday night, late September in Texas. Callie, Mina, and Emma get ready for the football game. Constrained during the week by the plaid skirts and button-down shirts of the St. Agnes School for Girls, they go all out. Callie pulls Emma’s purple miniskirt off and tosses it to Mina, sitting on the […]
Kelsey Peterson
Elin, with Pliers Elin, with pliers, pulled an old nail from the floor of the deck. She had cut her heel on the nail the day before; there was no blood, but it peeled away a rind of callused skin. She snipped the flap of skin with scissors. Isaac lifted her foot up and kissed […]
