Fiction | JOYLAND

Local Distance

Claire Oleson -

A leucistic moose, a pearled animal with starch-white fur and black eyes, dies to a kia soul going 79 on an upstate rural road....

Neighborhood Bakery

Stephen Kearse -

The Heritage Legacy Trust compliance officer looked through Calvin’s application materials for a third time. He watched her jeweled hands thumbing the vendor contracts,...

Big Tree

Séamus Murphy-Mitchell -

All the way to the hospital, through its various wings, and along its warren of corridors, I hope that my grandfather is dead, for...

The Possibilities

Yael Goldstein-Love -

I was the last one to arrive, as usual. The six other women were in their folding chairs arranged around the bright green rug...

The Voice

Leila Register -

He used to make me do this voice. He’d say please baby do the voice. And at the beginning I would do it every...

Tunnels

Yasmin Adele Majeed -

Back when we were friends, we spent Saturday nights in the tunnels. This was sophomore year, the cusp of fall in California, and at...

Disclosure

Maria Marchinkoski -

Sveta walked up the gravel drive to see what she came to see: a blind Shetland pony limping out the back of a Washington...

Worry

Alexandra Tanner -

The cabin air is dry and chemical. Everyone around us is watching My 600-lb Life. Poppy’s head is back and her mouth is open...

Cascade

Julia Hannafin -

Excerpted from Cascade (Great Place Books, April 2024) There is a starfish that sees with the surface of its body. The brittle star doesn’t have...

Black Sun, Incinerate Me

Maria Kuznetsova -

As Roman and I stroll through Central Park on the way to my book launch, the Soviet poet Marina Tsvetayeva gets up from a...