Fiction Pick of the Week: "Bird (on Back)"
A couple deals with animal complications, unhappiness, and terminal illness.
2010s
Fiction Pick of the Week: "This Bridge"
Scenes from a crumbling marriage, a friendship, a life in the painful present.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "The Stage from Behind"
Secular crises of two workers at a religious camp.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "How To Fall In Love"
Lessons for dating and dying.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Fable"
Life problems imagined as fantasies.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "What Will Make It Last"
Unspoken issues grip a couple's dinner along the Mississippi River.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Gory Special"
A backyard wrestling match; an examination of different young lives.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Returning"
A woman's dead father appears at a farmer's market.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Plans"
Dolls and complicated gender dynamics.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Step In"
A mysterious stone and the complexities of grief.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "The Burglar"
The real-time intersection of race, crime, reality, and entertainment.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Let All the Restless Creatures Go"
A story of medical ailments, family dynamics, and conservation work.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Simcoe Furriers"
A taxidermist's life gradually spins out of control.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "She Wants, She Gets"
A contemporary fairy tale of transformations and time.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "The Tragic Tale of the Baron and His Wife"
A story of blame.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Elephant Man"
A young girl uses unusual coping mechanisms after her father's death.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Corpseless Shrouds"
A woman recalls an endless lifetime of near-death experiences.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "William and His Woman Friends"
A man's friendships with various women reveal psychological and philosophical complexities.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Mother's Day"
Mother's Day triggers a wealth of memories and characters, past and present.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Sometimes You Break Their Hearts, Sometimes They Break Yours"
An undercover alien observes various human behaviors.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "The Ballad of Black Tom"
An excerpt from LaValle's novel about a black man in a Lovecraftian universe.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Do Not Save the Ferocious, Save the Tender"
A shipwreck, a mythical creature.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Classic Bernd"
College friends come together during a power failure and the onset of an ill-fated relationship.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Secondhand"
Various time passages in an old home.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Fire Was Coming"
Religion, high school football, and racial problems in small town America.
