Joyland Retro | Joyland

Please support Joyland by purchasing an issue of our print biannual Joyland Retro. Our first issue features Nathan Sellyn, Roxane Gay, Kevin Wilson, Zoe Whittall, Ricco Siasoco, James Greer, Jim Hanas, Andrew Hood, Ben Loory, Erica Lorraine, Scott McClanahan, and Margaret Wappler. All money goes towards the site and our future authors. Buy through our online store below or at McNally Jackson in Manhattan , Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal, Word in Brooklyn and Quimby's in Chicago. Stores and schools please contact us about wholesale.

JOYLAND EBOOKS FROM ECW PRESS

Collections of brilliant short fiction from Jim Hanas, Megan Stielstra, Natalee Caple, Chris Eaton and David Balzer. Buy direct from the publisher here.

If you enjoyed this story please support Joyland by purchasing an issue of our print biannual Joyland Retro. All money goes towards the site and our authors.

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Joyland is a literary magazine that curates fiction regionally. We’ve chosen several editors to select and post stories and excerpts by authors connected to locales across North America every week.

Toronto

I Was a Teenage Minotaur

A.G. Pasquella

At the mall a lady offers me a free sample of zit cream and I’m about to be all sarcastic, like “Look, lady— I’ve got a giant bull’s head. No one’s going to notice a few zits.” But there’s something...

Midwest

Cousin Barnaby Is Dead

Clifford Garstang

I’m in the middle of an argument with my mother—she thinks I should ask her friend’s daughter Denise Knickerbocker out on a date while I’m home for Spring break, and I think that’s the worst idea...

San Francisco

A Tarantella

Zoë Ferraris

Massimo was not weak. You could not call him weak. He was tough, mean, and shithouse poor, scrubbing toilets and cooking ragu in a sleazy hostel, but only because his brother owned the place and was...

Los Angeles

Pixelated Portraits of Peace, Love & Understanding, Part II

Jesús Ángel García

photo: Timothy Faust adapted from badbadbad gaypen.jpg Exterior shot of the Playpen. Hours before, Gay Pride had lit up the streets of downtown Gethsemane. The celebration and competing...

Montreal Atlantic

The Border

Arjun Basu

And then she pulled off the highway and rolled into the town there and stopped in front of a bar and said “Get out” and I said “For real?” and she said “Get out” and I got out and she popped the...

Vancouver

The Morrigan

William Ilan Rubel

Wren Connected to the bog-land by a wooden causeway, the crannog roundhouse was ringed by rough, stout poles. Wisps of smoke rose from its chimney, as it sat, squat and secure, built atop four crude...

Consulate

Eulalie Laid

Elise Levine

At forty feet on a weedy plain aglint with crushed beer cans, observed by pouting bass, he bumped her. She finned to catch her balance but he was enormous as a dirigible in his black suit and hood....

Joyland South

Day Trip

Erin Brooks Worley

My sister would sneak out late, after midnight. I’d hear her door open, then watch through my bedroom window to see her run down the end of our dark, curving driveway. Then headlights through the...

New York

Fukushima Mon

Tom Paine

Last month, by Gmail, I got the invitation to your funeral in Japan on March 11th. It took me a few breaths to remember that was the first anniversary of the 2011 Tohoko earthquake and tsunami. It...