May 6, 2014 | Nonfiction
How I Turned Skyrim into a Middle-Class Life Simulator.
Darren Davis
In November 2011, Bethesda Game Studios released Skyrim, a gigantic, multi-console fantasy role playing game set in Bethesda's larger Elder Scrolls universe. Also in November 2011, I was just starting my graduate program at the University of Washington. I watched the footage on YouTube and told myself that after grad school, after I was done studying literary nonfiction and contextualizing and living an examined life, I would play the hell out of this game.
What We Take With Us: an Interview with Amy Kurzweil
Katie Peyton
Amy Kurzweil likes to kick rocks and pull down curtains. Metaphorically, of course – she’s a writer.
Through her precocious and delightfully distrustful narrators, she examines the constructs
3 Comics
Cameron Pierce and Jim Agpalza
As Randy Johnson awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a mutant killing machine.
Ellis was truly surprised by
Ode to Joy
Jim Ruland
People spend their whole lives struggling to get what they think they want, and even if they get it, they find that it’s either not what they wanted, or it comes with so many unwanted
Enemy
Sean Kilpatrick
Enemy is the only title a film about relationships should have.
You Think You Can Stop Me
Dennis Scott Herbert
You Think You Can Stop Me??
You can’t stop me.
So they don’t let me bring my cooler no more, big deal. I’ll go to my truck. Cold beers in my truck, my personal space. Right there in the
hi my name is, huh? my name is, what?
Richard Wehrenberg, Jr.
rich
in maybe middle school i started telling my teachers, on the first day of class, that i’d prefer to be called rich. my friends started calling me rich too, because i told them to. i think
The Catcher’s Shadow
Joe Aguilar
Any hitter can read any catcher’s shadow. Adjust for time of day and source of light, adjust for pitcher arm slot, specialty, handedness. Adjust for sea level, wind, weight of air, smog or lack of
Baseball Fan
Shane Kowalski
In the bedroom, my girlfriend, every time she climaxes, shouts out: Bob Feller!
She is a big baseball fan.
Does it bother me that my girlfriend shouts out the name of Bob Feller in pleasure
No Kin in Flowers
Carabella Sands
You drink all the beers I bought
And push towards me an arm full of bottles
You say, “I want to be alone
With my dreams forever.”
I leave you to be with my dreams
They are all of you
An Excerpt from Unchecked Privileges, or I've Got To Sing a Torch Song
Michael Sajdak & Gucci Lean
I'm giving up cold turkey for lent.
* * *
The shuffling of their feet wakes you ask they sneak into your stable at night. These are the biker boys, the popular boys in
Veteran Broadcaster Art Luce Signs Off
Matt Izzi
Two outs to go in the season, eight-nothing Huskies, it’s been a swinging party and nobody invited the Mats. Now Mould’s on the mound to close it out, he’s just been unhittable all year. A lot of
the gospel of tender rage: Elizabeth Ellen interviews Juliet Escoria
We need to leave room for bad days. But we also need to be brave enough to call people out. More understanding. Less fear. If I had a gospel, this is what I would preach—the gospel of tender rage. It’s not the same as punk rock, but it’s close.
Depth of Field
Sarah Malone
François was working on a baseball campaign, the design and effects for it, two thirty second spots and a sixty, and fifteens cut down from the thirties. The director and his producer, on the couch
Until the Light is Off
James Yates
Visiting hours ran until eight o’clock that night. Matt sat by his father’s bed and thumbed through some text messages. If a nurse or attendant came in, he quickly slipped the phone into his
SF/LD Announcement
We're super excited to announce our next three Short Flight / Long Drive Books titles!!!
October 2014
Women
Chloe Caldwell
Women is a semi-autobiographical novella focusing
Frasier at 31
Amanda Goldblatt
Frasier Crane never gets what he wants because Frasier Crane is a horrible person.
Amanda is in her first year of a new city, Chicago, binging on television on the internet, and suspects
THE 2014 AMERICAN LEAGUE BASEBALL SEASON, AS PREDICTED BY J. RYAN STRADAL
J. Ryan Stradal
AL EAST
1. Tampa Bay Rays
WHY: Erik Bedard, who was the Pirates’ Opening Day starter in 2012, was forced to fight for the fifth spot in the Rays’ rotation, which is a sign of a
Whether You Win or Lose
Christine Fadden
Uncle Max picked me up for tryouts. I must have been fidgety. I changed the radio station a half dozen times before turning it off.
“The Beach Boys shouldn’t call themselves boys,” I said.
2 Poems
Jacob Collins-Wilson
My Father as a Baseball Coach
His hands are golden, approaching leather.
He wears a mid-night blue windbreaker
because coaching baseball is a frozen verb.
Whenever my father runs his hand
The First Game
Nicholas Ward
We parked on Michigan Avenue like we always would, walking hand-in-hand through Corktown, the oldest neighborhood in Detroit. We bought peanuts in brown paper bags from vendors on the street. They
Hobart "Experts" Predict the 2014 MLB Season -- Andrew Ervin
Andrew Ervin
On these frigid afternoons between the Ides of March and Opening Day, when the final roster spots are being claimed, it’s still possible to envision that November parade down Broad St. The Phillies
For Jake "The Snake" Roberts, on the Occasion of Making an Unlikely Out in Centerfield During a Charity Softball Game
Colette Arrand
Like every catch before or since, yours is a matter of geometry
and probability. To say this is to admit that I believe in miracles.
Pro-wrestling is this: the work of death and resurrection.
Nymph()maniac Vol. 1 and 2
Sean Kilpatrick
Why is Von Trier my man? He’s my man whose bruises I refuse to conceal. I have no debate or defense, he’s atop me. I must strangle myself in his defense.