The Literary Issue

A cursory glance at this issue’s stories seems to yield a disturbing thread. In fact when we were curating the story order one of the staff quipped we should subtitle this “The Violence Issue.” We begin with shotguns, and move into hunting, disease, prize fighting, cockfighting, Russian roulette, rape, police abuse, headless dolls, and an alligator with a knife stuck in its head.

Phew.

Fortunately, readers of literary journals aren’t much into cursory glances. These stories may have their bases in violent acts, but each is in fact a probing exploration of the humanity that persists in the wake of the world’s violence—apart from it, despite it, and far more powerful in the long run.

Read. Think. Enjoy.

Note: As we anticipate a long, Covid-prompted loneliness this fall and winter, we’re breaking with tradition and posting stories and excerpts from all our Issue 5 contributors this time. Stay well.

– Joe, Zac, Renee, Marci, David, Zoë, Ronak, Tommy

Table of Contents (click the links for stories and excerpts)

Sisters of the Shotgun, Stephanie Dickinson
A Fall Play: In One Act & 3 Scenes, David Luntz
My Mother on Film, Natasha Markov-Riss
Andy Richter’s Life in Quarantine; The Last Photograph of Tiny Tim, Wynne Hungerford
Loo-Lah, Niamh Bagnell
Asian-Asian, James Morena
At the Same Time, Melissa Sharpe
Boys like Trees, Aiden Baker
Geometry, Kevin McLellan
Artemisia, Honor Vincent
Out East on the L.I.E., Naomi Bess Leimsider
Lady: Part 1, Swathi Desai
Audree Begins to Speak, Tamara Jaffe
Life Underground, Avra Margariti
No Man’s Land, Graham Scott
Down Along the Yocona, Austin Shirey
Nothing Plays Itself, Juan Carlos Reyes
The Headless Army of Charlie Close, Die Booth
Issue 5 Contributors
About the Cover

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