I stop at a 7-Eleven for a pack of gum. I give the cashier a twenty.

"You don't have any ones?" the cashier asks.

I don't, but I say I do anyway.

The cashier just stares at me.

"Um,

So, my step-sister Alice. She divorces her husband of ten years. Bart. High school sweethearts. Sad, sad, sad. Claims he beat her. Wins 75% in court. Unheard of, her lawyer says. But abuse factored

His caps lock button broke and he could only type in capital letters. He spent a notable portion of his money on hos and could not buy a new keyboard. When he emailed his friends they wrote back

1.

so there's this girl, as there always is, except she's a movie star, which figures, since this is me, telling you a story you aren't likely to believe anyhow, and she's not very

Erin McGraw teaches writing at Ohio State, where she works with her husband, the poet Andrew Hudgins. She's the author of The Good Life, Lies of the Saint, and The Baby Tree. In her latest

Paul Maliszewski's Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters and Other Great Pretenders, was published in January by The New Press. The book is a collection of essays, interviews, and reports

1. Sweet Sixteen:

She is thinking of her father at the breakfast table, reading the paper. Can almost hear him humming softly to himself. Can hear the slow crunch of cereal and the

1. Janie

When I was sixteen, my dad's new wife and her daughter, Mary Ann, moved in, so I had to get out. I found a burned-out one story place on Corey Road near the gas plant. When it wasn't

At some point, the people in their thirties and forties decided to go one of two ways: dog fighting, or dog grooming. It was a simple choice, really, and one for which their childhoods and young

On the way home, Jill pulls through Dairy Queen and orders a burger and a butterscotch sundae. Her boyfriend orders the same thing, three large fries and a dilly bar. They eat while Jill drives,

I first became a fan of Hannah Tinti's writing when I read her story, "Home Sweet Home," (appearing in her collection Animal Crackers). The story begins: "Pat and Clyde were murdered on pot roast

Shopping

I was sitting at the kitchen table, it was morning, the light was pale and fine, he was messing about, making something nice for me to eat. 'I want you to come with me to buy a

In less than an hour, the ferry was at half-speed, the wind had died and the magnificent flora of Cane Island was in full view. They were in the brochure again, the one the travel agent had given

Elias was a banker, so we left with more than most. $1,600 to spend at the outfitters—three yoke of oxen, 2000 pounds of food, boxes of bullets and spare parts: tongue, axle, wheel. Two sets of

Meine Liebe

It got to where I couldn't stop talking about him, though our relationship had to be secret — there was no other way — for he was fifty-eight, Daniel M. Kennedy Professor of

John Brandon's debut crime noir novel Arkansas is full of men who become bored or dissatisfied with the straight life and who, in the process of trying to find something else, end up working as

In God's Country

Camping in the northern part of the state, two guys and a girl woke to the sound of what they thought was a nearby bear. The sound did come from a bear, but the bear wasn't

The boy mastered the alphabet, but the other boys were playing soccer. The boy mastered subtraction, but the other boys were saying who could and couldn't sit in the back row of the cafeteria. The

It's Christmas Eve, our birthday's less than an hour away, and, per Tannen family tradition, it's Davie's and my first night home for the holidays. Unlike me, Davie's not much of a drinker—not

The winter I turned twenty-seven, I followed a woman who said she might love me to a small town in Northwest Pennsylvania, a go-between place that provided me with little comfort, except maybe to

He could not look at the dog's eyes, light brown, like the sky before it started to rain. "Come on," Vassil said. The dog slowly followed him and climbed up on the backseat of the bone-shaker.

There is much to admire in the life and work of the author Michael Kimball: his sentence craft, his innovation, his generosity and enthusiasm. He's also a quite a thoughtful interview

1.

The sign is taped to a post and weathered and tattered as it is, it would be easy to believe that it has been there for weeks. But this post is one that Gord walks past several times a day,

Conversation

She had nine faces already, and each time she began to talk a new one was added. "How does she manage to do that?" he wondered, listening to her voice. It enveloped him like a

My boyfriend and I have sex and when we're finished he holds me close and whispers into my ear, I just date-raped you. What do you do now?

In the grocery store he throws an avocado at my head

In a walk-in closet, my father's ties were exactly six centimeters apart on wooden dowels. I gently touched the gaps between his ties and ran my fingers through the ties. Before anyone else, he