Fiction
The Ancestor of Hearts
By Christine Schutt and Diane WilliamsThe fur coat she was wearing hung as heavy as a child on her shoulders, and she looked stunned, arrived somehow by taxi, livery cab? Fleeced? Mrs. DePour’s large alligator bag was open.
Russell
By Daniel GrandboisWas my number perfect or incomplete, beautiful or ugly, real or mere illusion? I tried to calculate it but couldn’t step into the same river twice. I needed air and, thank Empedocles, there was still some left in the bucket.
Cake (extract)
By Sarah FrançoiseMany thanks for the wonderful Flowers you gave me. As they open they are fantastic I have never seen anything like them before. They really brighten my room. Excuse my writing as my left hand is useless. Again many thanks and Love from Mrs Bet Brown.
from Miransù
by Monica Sarsini, translated from the Italian by Maryann De JulioI did well to marry grandfather. Perhaps I wasn’t suited to being with sedate folk, worthy, reliable, but if you had spent the childhood and the youth that I had… When nonna died no one took the house in hand.
Chapter 1 from Little Is Left To Tell
a debut novel by Steven Hendricksout now from Starcherone Books All the children of Mrs. Rabbit had been healthy and happy, their rooms tidy, clothing and toys arranged in their places, sheets pulled snug, waiting to hold their bodies in the night, pillows where they would rest their heads when the clock sang time for bed.
an extract from Our Lady of the Nile
by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Melanie Mauthnerout now from Archipelago Books There is no better lycée than Our Lady of the Nile. Nor is there any higher. Twenty-five hundred meters, the white teachers proudly proclaim. “Two thousand four hundred ninety-three meters,” points out Sister Lydwine, our geography teacher. “We’re so close to heaven,” whispers Mother Superior, clasping her hands together.
The Selected Correspondence of Louis-Ferdinand Céline
translated from the French by Mitch AbidorThese letters are excerpted from The Selected Correspondence of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, additional letters from this manuscript will be featured through the Summer and Fall in the Brooklyn Rail.
Yup Nope
By Andrea TsurumiAndrea Tsurumi is an illustrator and cartoonist who likes (in no particular order) history, absurdity, dogs and monsters. Her work has appeared in The Nib, The Rumpus and is forthcoming in The Graphic Canon of Children's Literature.
Countless Evils
By HectorHector was a T. Motley directed experimental cartoonists' co-op that thrived through the 1990s. The text for this unpublished strip is from a "cut-up poem" provided by the science fiction poet, Lee Ballentine, at a fringe literature festival called "Death Equinox." I miss the 1990s.
Arrowschmidtt!!!
By Arryan DecaturArryan Decatur has an Aerosmith tattoo on the upper part of his right (your left) love handle that cost 70 dollars.
Message from March 3rd, 2014
By Molly RothMolly Roth is an aspiring human being/contributing member of society based out of Brooklyn, New York.
Overheard at the Atlantic Terminal Mall
By Steven LittleI almost forgot you were here.
