Series Archive
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “In Which Godzilla Questions Where His Life Is Going” by Josiah Meints
Godzilla has been a mainstay in popular culture since the 1950s, when he was conceived as a metaphor for the nuclear age and the new level of mass destruction introduced. Josiah Meints, in the story “In Which Godzilla Questions Where His Life Is Going” (The Collapsar) reimagines the famous
Literary Blueprints: The Orphan
In the wide realm of literature, having parents is a convenience that escapes many characters. The Orphan is one of the most prominent characters in literature, in part because the absence of parental figures automatically fuels so many possible motivations. Origin Story: Unlike some blueprints, which can be
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Souvenir Button” by Rosalyn Drexler
Proust famously stated, “The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.” In “Souvenir Button,” Rosalyn Drexler (A Public Space) explores paradises rendered, imagined, inhabited, and lost. Drexler opens the story with the unnamed narrator receiving a souvenir button made for her by an artist hanging out at
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “How Héctor Vanquished the Greeks” by George Choundas
The relationship between sports and war in American culture is deep; tune in any given Sunday and you’ll find fighter jets flying over the stadium and football jerseys designed with camo. In “How Héctor Vanquished the Greeks” (Harvard Review), George Choundas explores the kinship between war and sport through
Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Rogers Ladder” by Holly Wendt
In the summer of 1895, Linnie Rogers became the first woman to ascend Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, by climbing up a precarious, 350-foot wooden ladder made of stakes driven into a crack running up the rock formation’s side. In Holly Wendt’s “The Rogers Ladder,” (Gulf Stream) the national monument
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Los Angeles” by Ling Ma
In Marie-Helene Bertino’s “Edna in Rain” (reviewed in February), the narrator’s ex-lovers are literally raining from the sky, leaving her to deal with the surprising consequences. In Ling Ma’s “Los Angeles” (Granta), the narrator has similar problems with past lovers, leading to a wild exploration of memory’s hold on
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Once You Learn, You Never Forget” by Anthony Varallo
Few images are more boilerplate in capturing the parental role of ushering a child towards independence than that of parent teaching a child how to ride a bike—the pushing, the holding, the letting go, the tears. In “Once You Learn, You Never Forget” (Cimarron Review), Anthony Varallo resurrects this
Do-Overs: Star-Crossed
Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone. I’ll be waiting; all that’s left to do is run. You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess, It’s a love story, baby, just say, “Yes.” Taylor Swift left out the part about Romeo and Juliet dying, though. Why does
The Words Beneath the Sound: Music Inspired by Literature
As Virginia Woolf famously observed, the best writing often begins with a rhythmical “wave in the mind,” an inner tempo around which syntax and diction are arranged, a guiding beat of artistic intuition that, when struck upon, makes it nearly impossible to set down the wrong word. Other writers
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Raised by Humans” by Christopher Knapp
Anyone who has owned a cat has at some point looked on it with envy as it slumbered peacefully through the day. How are they so comfortable in their own skin? So clear in purpose, while we humans struggle so mightily to know who we are and what we