In his new story collection, Claire, Wading Into the Danube By Night, Jeffrey Condran’s fiction once again shines a light on places where the personal meets the political in the age of anxiety, and where characters who feel battered by life have no choice but to look for hope in the small intimacies that sometimes…

Steve Wingate is a Colorado man. His first novel, Of Fathers and Fire (2019), was set there, and his second, The Leave-Takers (2021), was supposed to be, too. But when Wingate moved to South Dakota — not the usual order of operations; my home state is a place people generally leave — he said the…

Chloe N. Clark tells Rachel Mans McKenny about her new story collection Collective Gravities (Word West Press, July 2020), her craft, her editing habits, and the apocalypse. This interview was shortened and edited for clarity. + The short stories in Collective Gravities take place in either Midwestern cities and landscapes or space. What was your…

Michael Nye discusses his novel All The Castles Burned (Turner Publishing) and his editorship of STORY with Kathy Bates. + Kathy Bates: It’s exciting to hear the about the relaunch of STORY whose origins date back to 1941. As the new editor-in-chief, what are your plans for the literary magazine, and what should readers and…

Photo © Carolina CabanillasIn Melanie Hatter’s Malawi’s Sisters, winner of the inaugural Kimbilio National Fiction Prize (Four Way Books), three sisters from a well-to-do Washington DC family follow separate paths in life. The oldest, Kenya, follows in her parents’ footsteps, first becoming a successful attorney like her father and then a homemaker like her mother.…

David H. Lynn discusses his new short story collection Children of God (Braddock Avenue Books, May 2019) and his editorship of the Kenyon Review with Grayson Treat. + Grayson Treat: Children of God is a collection of stories old and new. It’s easy to see the recurring theme in the newer stories, all featuring characters…

Two storytellers inspired by landscape — and, as it happens, both fans of the movie, Days of Heaven — Cary Holladay and Charles Dodd White recently read each other’s new books, swapped questions and answers, and found common ground in dangerous characters, moments of weirdness, and “thoughts that would shame hell.” + First, Cary Holladay…

From a newly divorced woman employed by a front for illegal drugs, to a man who seeks revenge when the farm he loves is invaded by meth producers, to a shady Arkansas businessman wrestling with his own wildness (and that of his teen son) as he attempts to return a domesticated bobcat to its native…

Sherrie Flick is is the author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness (University of Nebraska Press), the flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting (Flume Press), and two short story collections with Autumn House Press: Whiskey, Etc. (2016), and Thank Your Lucky Stars (Fall 2018). Her fiction appears in many anthologies including Norton’s Flash Fiction Forward,…

Veronica looks at Ralfy’s bronze face and sees that beautiful grin, that smile that she really wants to believe exists only for her. It breaks the hardness of his face, and he seems like two boyfriends at once. Since she was thirteen, she’s seen him at all the parties, and even then she wanted to…

In the opening short story of Renee Simms’ debut collection Meet Behind Mars (Wayne State University Press), protagonist Hattie attends a literary conference and receives a disappointing manuscript critique. Her novel is rejected because it doesn’t conform to the stereotypical tropes readers and publishers ascribe to and look for in black fiction. Lacking drugs, hip…

I first read Tara Masih’s work with the publication of her story collection Where the Dog Star Never Glows. I admired her language and voice and sense of structure. Next, she edited The Rose Metal Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, a volume which has helped many writers start or refine their skills in a…