Here’s an excerpt from the long-awaited second novel from Charles McNair. I loved Charles’s first novel, Land O’ Goshen, which was set in a near-future distopic Alabama. This chapter from Pickett’s Charge gives us a glimpse into the surreal world of the novel. Not only is Charles a fantastic writer, but he’s a centerpiece to…

My good friend and cohort (along with Blake Butler) in hosting the solar anus reading series, Amy McDaniel writes stunning fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Amy’s a native Atlantan, though worldly she is, having earned her MFA from the New School and spent a stint in Bangladesh. But she’s back home, with us, where we love…

My good friend, Man Martin, here with an excerpt from his novel that shows how alternately hilarious and sad his story is. If you’ve read either of Man’s first two novels ( Days of the Endless Corvette and Paradise Dogs ), then you’re familiar with the Martin-esque story. Still, Man always finds a way to…

This story by Andy Plattner gives us the jinx. Funny, just the other night I was at a Braves-Phillies game with my wife, and Cole Hammels had a shutout going into the bottom of the ninth. I, of course, pointed this out to my diehard-Phillies-fan-better-half, who said nothing. When the Braves scored, all she said…

Recently transplanted from Portland, Oregon to Atlanta, Jesse Lichtenstein has a hand in everything: fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. He also helps to run, from afar, the Loggernaut Reading Series. We’re glad to have him here. This story was originally published in Propeller. + She had liked the feel of his hand on her skin. When…

In this story a couple teenagers search out psilocybin mushrooms in a north Florida cow pasture. Danger hovers over this story. If you’ve never heard stories about novice mushroom hunters getting sick, just Google that. Then there’s the threat of suicide hanging over Felix’s father, and the guilt that that instills in Felix. + “Do…

Sheri Joseph was my dissertation advisor, so we have a special kind of friendship. Fortunately, it’s no feat to genuinely love her writing for itself, and not because I feel obligated to! Sheri’s books and the characters within them have touched me since I was her student eleven(!) years ago, when I read Bear Me…

Josh Russell is one of my favorite writers. His stories and novels are funny, sad, and deeply human. His sentences are deceptively easy to read. Try reading them out loud and hear their music. Here is a story of a college hookup that, like all such things, usually mean more than they do to at…

Like the mythological Greek figure to whom the title of this story alludes, Anthony Grooms’s character here hovers above the ruins of our most famous city after the eco-disaster that brought the deluge. Certainly more Atlantans ought to think about all the driving they do. Unfortunately, while this story’s science fiction, my understanding of the…

This strange incantation reads only loosely as narrative, but in that we get the sense of this woman’s life lived and now, in her afterlife, she drifts, imagining her past in a body from her past, though she remembers that body’s future. Let that sink in for a minute. Ben Spivey always coming through with…

Here’s a short but strange piece from Blake Butler, a writer who’s been called the 21st century William Burroughs. Blake’s imagery is always somewhat nightmarish, and here he delivers with this weird hairless and silent kid cooped up behind a burial plot. + There’s a boy in a cage in the sand fields behind where…

This sad story by Susan Rebecca White chronicles most of a woman’s adult life. That’s quite a feat in this short space. The harsh realities of love lost and life continuing on despite that are displayed here with terrible sorrow, but also with hope. + You remember looking down at Cam’s soft brown eyes while…