In high school, dating Randall "Big Randy" Barton was a rite of passage for the small population of black girls at our exclusive boarding school in rural New Hampshire. His father was a prominent

The drinking life has been rendered in print on so many occasions, it seems unlikely that anyone could find anything new to say about it. It seems unlikely, but then Patrick DeWitt's

Molly Gaudry yanked me back from a depressing precipice. For the past three weeks I've been immersed in the world of Cormac McCarthy, climbing inside his mind via his newly opened archive at Texas

Carol Gipson had acne and was the slightest bit pudgy but she seemed like someone who would turn beautiful with time and I wanted to get in on the ground floor. To spend more time with her, I'd

I put on my suit. It's a business suit. I'm a businessman and I mean business. I mean 'business' with a big 'B' and an ampersand. So from now on, I will say, I'm a Businessman &. Because it

With apologies to Jorge Luis Borges' "Borges and I"

The other one, the one called Melcher, is the fuckup.

I travel a lot for work (sales) and when I'm driving or flying or sitting in an

Doug's house looks the same as Bob's house. Bob lives next to Doug. On the ground surrounding their houses they have planted blades of vegetation. Thousands of them; millions perhaps. They call

Lucky

All these people. How did they do it? Well, many did not. Broke as eggs on sidewalks, sister. They were walking around in the street, everywhere, and I was there, watching it unfold. In

Kyle Beachy's debut novel The Slide is the kind of first novel that makes you happy for the presence of books in the world. It's weird and wild and hilarious and touching all at once. This book

I first read J. Robert Lennon in a short-lived lit mag out of Philly called Night Rally. I picked up a copy of the first issue at Borders after a Michael Chabon reading in October 2000, and

penguins

For the penguins it is cold and sometimes it is cold like that in my bedroom, where I sleep, and the covers that cover me up aren't enough to keep me warm. This is summer, but there

Slut Whore has every Barbie on the market, lined up sitting on her windowsill along her bedroom wall, and all the best clothes and accessories. She invites her friends over and they dress and

Near a mound of fresh dirt under a sprawling oak tree. Cannons rumble in the distance. Lounging next to the mound is a young man, about 19. He is dirty. Underneath the dirt and blood streaking his

My friend Brandon has packed his friend's Jeep with provisions of snowballs, dried turkey, Finlandia. Observing the heaped vehicle, and considering the 2,700 miles to California, I am reminded of

Larry Fondation is the author of four books, all of which display his mastery at quilting micro and short fictions to create large bodied tales.

His latest collection, Unintended

Before the blue was sailed by Columbus and his greedy, maritime ilk, before the men who followed him brought plagues, monotheism and gunpowder, there dwelt in the Piedmont a small band of itinerant

Early Morning

Debra Jims dreams of Kool-Aid. The juice leaves a red mustache above her lip. Men around her have mustaches too, real ones, thick and masculine. Her husband Todd rolls over and

"...as soon as a member of the family has breathed his or her last a younger member of the household... is told to visit the hives, and rattling a chain of small keys tap on the hive and whisper

The Piano Thief

It'll take him all of a month, longer if he's in love. But always at least those thirty days. Because a piano is heavy. What he's learned to do over the years, though, is take

Jedediah Berry's first novel The Manual of Detection came out in February from the Penguin Press to uniformly awesome reviews from places like the New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, The

Georgia Ambler used to jog on Thursdays while Jake and I shot baskets in the drive. "You're outta shape, old man," Jake laughed, doubled over himself. Locking his hands to his knees, Jake spit

When Larry hit the cow on the two-lane highway in Virginia, the face of the cow, its open mouth hurtling past the driver's-side window, scared him most. He was on his way to Charlottesville to

When they told us that the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, had been destroyed by a crude but powerful bomb — TERRORIST, they said, TERROR, with the same rote certitude of those who chant

Do you really spend 80% of your free time knitting?

Yes. I've knit during a blackout and a brownout, on the back seat of a double bike, on the beach during the eye of a hurricane, and during a

Fourteen years old, Thisbe Casper has begun riding her bicycle around Hyde Park looking for God. Before each school day and after, she pedals up and down the street in a gray skirt and blue

NOTES ON GRIM TALES

 

I see the dates on the work go from 1996-2004. Were these written one by one and then later compiled in a certain order? How did the construction process for Grim