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Jean Thompson, “Fire Dreams”
A woman lives alone in a neighborhood of families. (from Who Do You Love) We’re eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in bed. Peanut butter and jelly is all we could find in the kitchen. The...
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Alice Munro, “Meneseteung”
After the death of her family, a poetess lives alone in the house her father built. (from The New Yorker, January 11, 1988) One thing she has noticed about married women, and that is how many of them...
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David Foster Wallace, “The Depressed Person”
A depressed person’s therapist dies. (from Harper’s Magazine, January, 1998) The therapist–who was substantially older than the depressed person but still younger than the depressed person’s mother,...
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Sara Powers, “Dating a Dead Girl”
A man falls for a woman after her death. (from Zoetrope Vol. 5, No. 1) It seemed natural as rain for a second, when Meredith said it, that the girl he’d been feeling guilty about had died, as if it...
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Jean Thompson, “Applause, Applause”
Two college buddies reunite after a decade. (from Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, edited by David Sedaris) Ten years of letters, of extravagant alcoholic phone calls. The continual...
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David Schickler, “Kissing in Manhattan”
A woman meets a rich man who buys her fancy dresses, takes her to fancy dinners, and then cuts the dresses off of her and makes her stare at herself in the mirror. (from Kissing in Manhattan) Rally...
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Aimee LaBrie, “A Good Thing”
A woman’s life is changed by her new job as an organ transplant coordinator. (from Zoetrope Vol. 16, No. 1) Words and phrases we’re taught not to use when dealing with the donor family: harvest,...
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Ron A. Austin, “Do It Yourself”
A grandfather tries to teach his grandson to be a man by drowning baby possums and beating up a couple of juvenile delinquents. (from Black Warrior Review Fall/Winter 2012 39.1) The kids sat up and...
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Caitlin Horrocks, “Zolaria”
The summer after their fifth grade year, two unpopular girls create their own world. (from This is Not Your City) It is July and we are a miraculous age. We have been sprung from our backyards, from...
View ArticleCharlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
A woman put on bed rest for anxiety loses her mind. (from The Yellow Wall-Paper) It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw–not beautiful ones...
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A pretty fifth-grade teacher dies of tuberculosis and her students mourn her loss. (from Nothing But You: Love Stories From The New Yorker) We meant to have her for our teacher forever. We intended to...
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Christie Hodgen, “Elegy for Elwood LePoer (1971-1992)”
A poor, sad-sack loser inadvertently changes the life of a neighborhood girl. (from American Short Fiction Summer 2009) There wasn’t much chance for you (or Malinda, or my mother, or Bill, who killed...
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Nina McConigley, “Curating Your Life”
A Wyoming woman whose parents are from Kerala, India moves to Chennai, but finds herself neither American nor Indian enough. (from American Short Fiction Fall 2009) In Chennai, paradise could be found...
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Kevin Canty, “Red Dress”
A teenage boy wants to be seen by his mother. (from Honeymoon and other stories) In everyday life, she was vague, sometimes absentminded, wandering the house while my father was at work while she was...
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Caitlin Horrocks, “Steal Small”
A woman learns to accept her life. (from This Is Not Your City) “You need one of those shots?” “Tetanus? I’m fine,” he said, but there’s no way of knowing with Leo if he meant fine because he’d had one...
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Caitlin Horrocks, “The Lion Gate”
A forty-three-year-old woman takes a vacation from her life after a breakup. (From This Is Not Your City) She’d begun the trip staying in youth hostels because they seemed more adventurous, but the...
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Holiday Reinhorn, “Get Away from Me, David”
A former alcoholic who works at a bank has a very bad day. (from Big Cats) Jose put his arms around my waist. “I want to welcome you, David,” he said. “Your probation period is over. It’s over, man....
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Christine Sneed, “Quality of Life”
A woman can not escape the attention and money of a much older man. (from portraits of a few of the people I’ve made cry) She felt that in a way, however, she deserved what she got; if she were...
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Laura Hendrix, “A Record of Our Debts”
A young girl gets blamed for a plague on her town. (from McSweeney’s Quarterly 29) “And girls,” he says, bending over to examine a line of ants. “Look down here. Closer.” We three crouch, the line of...
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Laura Kasischke, “If a Stranger Approaches You about Carrying a Foreign...
A stranger asks a woman to carry a package onto an airplane. (from If a Stranger Approached You) As was always the case in airports, there was a small crowd of confused people (the elderly, the poor,...
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