5 min read stories

At the beginning, there were the not-yet-living. Although they were something less than present, and something more than absent, the not-yet-living were...

I live in a college town in western Oregon and lately people here have been talking about their small-town Midwestern upbringing like it was a war they...

I try to imagine a specific reader in time and space. Sometimes I imagine myself. Not the current one, but a recent one: Steven back in 2011. And I write for...

I try to imagine a specific reader in time and space. Sometimes I imagine myself. Not the current one, but a recent one: Steven back in 2011. And I write for...

The realtor showed us the house on West Garland Avenue and insisted it had everything we wanted.“Look,” he said, “there’s a fireplace, granite countertops,...

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, citizens of Grimsville young and old, I write to you today with good news. The wait is over. Your beloved World’s...

The pineapples arrived six or twelve at a time.“A half dozen or a dozen,” Culver said and Jane wondered why she hadn’t thought to group them that way in her...

Four elderly men in tracksuits passed the bench. He noticed one of them, a white-bearded man, thin and pale with a long nose, was staring pointedly, annoyance frozen on his face.

In seeking to resolve a conflict between two parties one can assume each believes it is acting in good faith just as the hopeful gravel waits for your rough...

Did you know sometimes I take little Joel to your graves? I weed. He runs whooping through the stones, over bodies. He scalps Indians, beheads terrorists....

My neighbor is burning his mail again.

“Do you grind your teeth,” the Hygienist asked, but Callie didn’t answer because the Hygienist was fiddling in her mouth, and because Callie knew the...