In Katya’s house there are eight women who will never leave. They are splayed across a big, black, L-shaped couch in various states of beatific decline at two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. They are arranged haphazardly: Some dozing…
Essay by Jahzerah Brooks • The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival is, at its core, a story about tearing down and building up. In this debut novel set against the backdrop of a working carnival and a wartime munitions factory,…
Hunger never came naturally to me. As a baby, I didn’t cry for milk, preferring to gaze at the mold-splashed ceiling and grab at dust motes, twining my tiny hands through their light. Elaine told me this was because…
We shall leave, for remembrance, one rusty iron heart. The city’s rusty heart, that holds both the hustler and the square. Takes them both and holds them there. For keeps and a single day. —Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on…
We wanted to feed the bees. We wanted this privilege every year, but only when we were blanketed safely in the hills. We wanted something small and threatening to need us, so we could decide whether it deserved our…
Content Warning—miscarriage, childbirth I wake up to a uterus on the pillow next to mine. It looks vaguely like the image I saw on the pamphlet when I was browsing for birth control. I close my eyes again. The dull,…
Essay by Sam Risak • Author of a combined six books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College, and president of the literary nonprofit Sweet: A Literary Confection, Ira Sukrungruang…
