Regions | JOYLAND

Florida

Rachel Lyon -

The summer between Jack Booth Jr.’s sophomore and junior year of high school, his mother left him and his dad...

Deimos and Phobos

Fortunato Salazar -

My mother is getting riled up and people are starting to notice. We’re in line at the Pink’s on La Brea, same as every...

The Crooked Heart of Mercy

Billie Livingston -

We're pleased to present an excerpt of Billie Livingston's most recent novel The Crooked Heart of Mercy, a brave, funny and heartbreaking novel about...

Tahoe

Kate Folk -

We’d been warned not to ride the ATVs straight up the hill, but we did, and one of us, I think it was Joel,...

The Outpatient

Philip Brunst -

“With my daughter,” Genevive said to Mercedes, “all I had to do was ask myself, ‘If I don’t, who will?’ You see, even as...

Daddy I’m A Clown

Kevin Mandel -

Gone. Them. Really gone. Eventually she could talk about it easily. Perhaps too much so—glibness being an occupational hazard she was keen to avoid. “Not...

I’m The Teacher Who Saved Your Life

Anna Prushinskaya -

This happened during the fall of 2009, when everywhere I went people were anxious about the financial crisis. This was in Rockford, IL, where...

Sister, Stripper, Window

Ruth Madievsky -

Debbie lost her virginity to my eighth grade English teacher. She was in tenth grade. He was in his mid-twenties, probably. We had this...

The Neighbor

Deepa Shankaran -

No one knows that I lost my job, except the neighbors. They see me in my pajamas on the fire escape, or on the...

The Last Hot Day

Hazel Foster -

Spread out on the beach, Izzie presses her ear to the towel. She turns over fistfuls of sand, digging her fingers deeper into the...