Michael Loyd Gray’s collection The Space Between Now and Then opens with stories that explore the complexities of father-son relationships. Set in rural areas, these stories feature boys seeking their fathers’ approval—seeking a path into manhood. Wielding a great deal of power, these fathers, often gruff and intimidating, play counterpoint to their se...

My dad bought me a snake when I was eleven.

He came into our mobile home, and it shook as his weight was acknowledged. I was eating cereal near the front of the cab, sunlight streaming through the lace curtains. Every caravan seemed to have these lace curtains, covering the windows, an attempt at seeming posh and private, like we were all in denial over living in mobil...

“Wild Strawberries” was shortlisted for the 2025 Best in Rural Writing Contest by judge Jamie Guiney. Learn more about the contest here.

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It’s a dewy soft Tennessee morning in early May, 1994. I’m an 18-y...

There was nothing that could be done for him. One by one the men trapsed in and out of the of the long bedroom where the young boy lay. His face wore no expression as his breaths grew less frequent, his small chest shuddering up and down. Martin’s wife struggled to clean the tears from her eyes as she pressed a damp cloth to flowering wound on his forehead. She cleaned the dr...

In the acknowledgments to his memoir, now in its second edition, Edgar Porter quotes Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “Life is not what one has lived, but what one remembers and how one chooses to tell it.” Porter has lived a remarkable life, a personal and political journey marked by his quest for intellectual honesty and moral integrity, and in this book he remembers that life in vi...