Discover Great New Writers

Amadeo builds the cross out of heavy rough oak instead of pine. He’s barefoot like the rest of the hermanos, who have rolled up the cuffs of their pants and now drag the arches of their feet over sharp rocks…Read more

I opened the great sash window onto the morning pink of the square and made a decision.  Yes. Today.  Last Thursday evening, I sat in the corner like a sprouted potato, but this Thursday, I will speak up. I will…Read more

On Friday, August 20, 1937, three thousand people brimmed the bleachers at the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium—working stiffs and hoi polloi in general admission, swells in the reserved seats, and just outside the concrete walls, barefoot local kids climbed the…Read more

A Christmas tree was coming up Eleventh Avenue. Or rather, was trying to come; having tangled itself in a shopping cart someone had abandoned in the crosswalk, it shuddered and bristled and heaved, on the verge of bursting into flame.…Read more

I will never forget the first moments of my arrival. The Farallon Islands were not what I had been expecting. They were both smaller and stranger than I had pictured. A tiny, aquatic mountain range. It looked as though a…Read more

The tablelands of Hayré reached toward the sun in tremendous emptiness. Feldspar shone like shattered meteorites through open swells of untamed grass. Wispy groves of jackalberry and gigilé and dwarf persimmons splotched gargantuan pale horizons. Here and there a baobab…Read more

The eldest six of Francis and Viola Turner’s thirteen children claimed that the big room of the house on Yarrow Street was haunted for at least one night. A ghost—a haint, if you will—tried to pull Cha-Cha out of the…Read more

JFK is disgraceful. The arrivals hall is dirty, sickly lit, clogged with sour-mouthed taxi drivers. What a shameful first face for the country to offer its rosy visitors and inspirited immigrants, Rosalie thinks, this unpainted face of neglectful contempt. You’re on…Read more

Which color are we again?” I stood behind my father, resting my chin on his shoulder as he read the newspaper, and pointed to a map of Croatia splashed with red and blue dots indicating the opposing armies. He’d already…Read more