Fiction

  • November 2017

    Socrates statue
       By Alex Stein
    Photo: Pixabay Using Socrates’ trial as his point of departure, the author spins out a meditation on wisdom, the divine, justice, grace, and desire like “an arrow in the chest.” “We cann...

  • November 2017

    Padlock on a rusted door
       By Montasser Al-Qaffash
    An apartment on the bank of the Nile River for a fair price sounds like a no-brainer, unless that apartment happens to be right next to one of the most infamous prisons in Egypt. Th...

  • November 2017

    Photo: Katherine Dewey Hill
       By María José Navia
    Photo: Katherine Dewey Hill This story begins with three @ handles and ends with two.With a single hashtag, repeated insistently like a mantra...

  • November 2017

    The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1985
       By Stephen Mitchell
    Menashe Kadishman (1932–2015), The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1985, cor-ten steel, 15' 1" x 15' 5" x 9'. Kadishman’s sculpture “was partly inspired by an experience the artist had while se...

  • September 2017

    Orange lifejackets piled up on the shore of an island just next to a boat moored nearby. The open ocean and a dark sky looms in the background.
       By Gianni Skaragas
    Life jackets and a boat used by refugees and migrants to cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey lie abandoned on the Greek island of Lesbos (Photo: Aris Messinis / AFP / Getty Images) An intimate yet u...

  • September 2017

    Berlin. Photo: Daniel Krieg
       By Andreas Baum
    Photo: Daniel Krieg In post-unification Berlin, groups of squatters compete for empty housing. Who will gain the upper hand? The next morning, a group of angry men were standing in...

  • September 2017

    Foxglove design
       By Alit Karp
    Illustration: flickr.com / xyzquantumpoet A Lutheran seminary student wonders what it takes to become a Jew for his girlfriend, whose embrace is “not a preface to anything else.” I ...

  • May 2017

    Cliff jumping at Tenkiller Lake, August 2011. Photo: Rachel Folmar
       By Eddie Chuculate
    Cliff jumping at Tenkiller Lake, August 2011. Photo: Rachel Folmar A teenager finds himself living in the shadow of his lover’s deceased boyfriend. Cordell stopped by the gallery to drop off...

  • May 2017

    Two boats on dark blue water with ripples
       By Daniel Dencik
    Photo: Kai C. Schwarzer A relationship is put to the test when a young couple visits a family member on an isolated island. We left home to think it over. Nanna had an abortion three years a...

  • March 2017

    Illustration: Heidi Tailleferr
       By Claudia Salazar Jiménez
    Illustration: Heidi Tailleferr First and foremost, we focus on the comfort of our clients.” “And what aspects of your operations are oriented toward that goal?...

  • March 2017

    Man in a suit with his arms crossed. Photo: YSBRANDCOSIJN / 123rf stock photo
       By Basma Abdel Aziz
    Photo: YSBRANDCOSIJN / 123rf stock photo Who needs confusing laws and bothersome committees when you have an autocrat writing principles for every aspect of your life?  He was not tall or br...

  • March 2017

    Photo: www.flickr.com/people/fineplan
       By Yuri Herrera
    Photo: www.flickr.com/people/fineplan When you are a pestilent being the world stops being pestilent. Or does it? Each night Rafa stares at the vestibule in hatred until those in li...

  • March 2017

    Photo: James Abbott
       By Slađana Kavarić
    Photo: James Abbott Some people feel a need to be silent, but I need to look at myself in the mirror, scream, smash things, and tear up my own writing. That’s not so bad, it really isn’t, because all...

  • March 2017

    Profile photo: Chandan Kumar Photo: Michael Pham
       By Brano Mandić
    Profile photo: Chandan Kumar  Photo: Michael Pham If only people loved one another and learned to save money, if only the children at the orphanage could get foster parents, if only the sun shone bri...

  • March 2017

    Photo: Barn Images ift.tt/1phxbx2
       By Milovan Radojević
    Photo: Barn Images/ ift.tt/1PhXbX2  Since you intend to kill yourself anyway, why don’t you fit your death into our plans? We need heroes, and it’s all the same to you, he...

  • January 2017

    Photo: Michael Pereckas
       By Josefine Klougart
    Photo: Michael Pereckas Of Darkness is a book about love and death. These seem to me to be the only things worth writing about. When you write about love and death, the beauty in this world’s fa...

  • January 2017

    Momo rim
       By Nick Mulgrew
    STABLE URLhttp://www.gumtree.co.za/a-car-tyres-rims/overport/for-sale-set-of-second-hand-imported-momo/1001639422780910165059408SALE AREAOverport (Durban)DATE...

  • January 2017

    A bedroom with bubblegum pink walls.
       By Olga Zilberbourg
    How to Deliver a Genius Advice from a St. Petersburg–based website (*) Conceive in April, May, or June. A child conceived in the fall has no chance to amount to anyt...

  • January 2017

    Mexico City’s TAPO station from above. Photo: Anthony Quigley
       By Nadia Villafuerte
    Mexico City’s TAPO station from above. Photo: Anthony Quigley She picks up her suitcase. Gets in line. Shows her ticket without letting her fist tremble. Checks her luggage. They’re not...

  • November 2016

    A grouse on a snowy branch in winter
       By Iben Mondrup
    Photo: Gerry Paille/Flickr In this story from a snowy Greenland, a woman reluctantly joins her husband in the woods for a grouse hunt. Ready . . . aim . . .  She’s still in bed. She...

  • November 2016

    Tamas Galambos, Summer, 1981, oil on canvas. A detail from Galambos’s painting also appears on the cover of García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude reprinted by Penguin London in 2000.
       By Carmen Boullosa
    Tamas Galambos, Summer, 1981, oil on canvas. A detail from Galambos’s painting also appears on the cover of García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude reprinted by Peng...

  • November 2016

    Photo: Funkyfood London - Paul Williams / Alamy
       By Zsuzsa Selyem
    Photo: Funkyfood London - Paul Williams / Alamy Along the shore of the Danube, a cat reflects on world history and human nature. From Oppenheimer to Donne to Stalin to Ana Pauker the mus...

  • November 2016

    Photo by Jo Christian Oterhals
       By Gunnhild Øyehaug
    Photo by Jo Christian Oterhals If, the woman thinks, she were an airplane that crashed and someone located the little black box, that would be the sentence they found, to hear water, but...

  • November 2016

    Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria / Artothek / Bridgeman images
       By Zsuzsa Takács
    Gustav Klimt, Allée in the Gardens of Schloss Kammer, 1912, oil on canvas. Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria / Artothek / Bridgeman images Ride the tram through...

  • November 2016

    Photo: flickr.com/people/duluoz_cats
       By Alison Wong
    Photo: flickr.com/people/duluoz_cats With Neil Young playing in the background, a New Zealand woman living in Australia recrosses the ocean over a game of Checkers.  Luke shakes the...
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