CRAFT

How should a French bulldog be? This question preoccupies The Oldest Bitch Alive, the absurd, oddly wise debut novel by Morgan Day. Bizarrely funny and philosophical, the novel’s unlikely protagonists take on grandiose...

I owe Katie (the poet and essayist Catherine Pierce) five dollars. I have owed her five dollars since the autumn of 2000, when I inadvertently stiffed her the money after having a very inexpensive breakfast together. We were both first-year MFA students on a budget, yet at the café nearest to our apartments you could order eggs and toast for $3.95. Throw in a tip, an...

When I first met A. Kendra Greene at Florida Atlantic University’s Off the Page literary series, her energetic presence made it almost impossible to picture her sitting quietly at a desk writing. During our follow-up video call, she confirmed as much, admitting she...

By Darryl J. Benjamin •

Many contemporary short stories begin with what I’ve been calling “the mountaintop move”: an omniscient, panoramic first paragraph that orients us in time, space, and tone, followed by a second paragraph that drops us into scene. I first noticed this pattern while reading submissions for a literary contest, and by the end of that readin...

There is a dog at the end of the lane that can talk, my brother says. He shows us a fifteen-second video on his phone of a white dog pressing an assortment of buttons. “Walk. Outside. Now.” This dog knows over five hundred words, my brother says. And it understands complete sentences. Smart dog, my father says, lowering the television volume. The news anchors are tal...