One big expectation of the murder mystery is that the payoff includes some answers, that eventually we learn the truth. The best payoffs are layered, too, so that the revelations include not just who did the deed but how and why—what the...
At the spot where the girl lay, I see the refineries. Their stencils are blurred on the horizon, making their machinery less intricate, & therefore, holy.
Autumn stalled, the heat lingered, and an interim season began. In lieu of leaves, the sky rained with tales of sexual predation. More curiously, the world took notice: On the ground there occurred a clamor for stories of harassment and...
I’m fourteen and the smell of singed hair circles me like the halo of a pre-Renaissance Madonna. Loss already on my face. A summer crush holds out his fingers
Two years after her mother’s death, Jane’s boyfriend asked her to marry him, and nine months later, they moved across the country to start their new life. Jane was twenty-nine, ready to step away from Phoenix after a hard few years. Ryan...
In the last days of deadline, poring over pages, unexpected confluences began to take shape between stories in this issue and stories outside the magazine—stories that seemed unrelated at first but eventually fell into a kind of thematic...
