Q. How did this story come about? A. This short scene came to me pretty much fully realized as if I’d been walking around with these two all night. I like this couple and their dreamy, drunken, imperfect togetherness and I wanted the prose to feel dreamy, drunken and imperfect as well. I was going…

The bartender looks like Ed Sullivan. Or Richard Nixon. Shoulders to ears. Stroking his chin. Is there any place to get chicken fried steak in this town? We need answers and direction. Barkley says, meanwhile back at the farm. He narrates his own life story. Tells the bartender he looks like Boris Karloff only not…

How did this story come about? Ending is not more difficult than beginning, but it seems that way mostwise, the way it seems harder to climb the sheer wall of a mountain than to step off the edge once you get to the top. But that step: hole-ee fuckshit. Yeah, one step. Again: dayum dayum…

The last time I was drunk, sad and scared at the same time Wallet was gone, cell phone was dead, train was not running and I had to be at work soon, impossibly sober. I was far from home. I shivered, wrapped my arms around my arms, watched the cement move under my feet. I…

Q. How did this story come about? The inspiration for “Goodnight Dogs” comes from another story of mine “Origin” where a strange girl asks a woman to brush her hair with an antique brush. The girl’s uncanny presence and the simple act of brushing her hair has darker implications. The story is set in present-day…

Though they were friends once, and comrades, the two women no longer spoke. The townsfolk had long claimed a victor, but there was still some doubt regarding the origin of their conflict. Perhaps because of this and for other reasons, they were uneasy in the women’s presence. If one of the women entered the bakeshop…

Editor’s Note: Until I started digging through my archives for today’s feature I had blocked the trauma of most of my bad writing. Apparently, in 1996, I wrote a novel called Walking on Broken Glass. I have absolutely no memory of writing this novel. It is… deranged. I skimmed it and I thought, “whoever wrote…

Every good writer was once a bad writer. I would not be so bold as to suggest I am a good writer now but I have ample evidence that I was, at one time, a very very bad writer. It is an awkward thing to look back at my writing from the late 90s and…

Q. Why did you choose Marcelle Heath to invite to participate in this project? I read works of fiction at least twice, no matter what kind they are. The first time, I try to admire as a reader. The second time, I try to figure out how the story works. I don’t expect both of…

October I left my shoes on the rubber mat next to the side door. If there wasn’t room on the mat, I had to put my shoes on top of the boots. Then, I had to make sure the bottoms of the boots were always on the mat. That way, any dirt that was still…

Q. How did this story come about? Although each woman in this story is very different, they all have two things in common: 1)They live between worlds, seeking the solace of the unreal when their lives become unbearable, and 2)they all feel the same pressure to conform to societal standards, to live a normal life,…

The mother sits on the side of the couch that the mother always sits on. The long weight of her has bent the couch cushion into a shallow V shape. Sofa, she thinks. Her daughter is forever telling her not to say ‘couch,’ that only rural people say ‘couch’ and ‘crick.’ Her daughter cares very…