by Louise Marburg | Sep 12, 2018
A week after the fourth of July, my dog Speedy nipped an eight-year old kid who wandered onto my property from the subdivision across the way. Speedy was a Shepherd-Husky mix and normally pretty docile, so I thought the kid must have been teasing him,...
by Lee Ann Roripaugh | Aug 27, 2018
Fuji Bay in Sioux City, slow Monday night, and The Bachelorette’s on TV. She’s stopped on her way back from the airport, in an attempt to self-soothe with sushi. Earlier in the day, she said goodbye to The Beloved in a different airport, then dozed on and off...
by Glen Pourciau | Jun 11, 2018
Seventh inning, score tied, and Shaw leans back in his favorite chair and begins another beer. I’ve already had my usual three and have turned down his offer of a fourth. Since I got here he hasn’t said a word about anything but the ballgame, one we’ve...
by Maya Lang | May 16, 2018
Maya Lang was the winner of the 2017 Neil Shepard Prize in Fiction Gaurav Gupta set his saxophone down and crossed the herringbone floors, pausing at the threshold to hear the women laugh gaily, Lilly’s the loudest of all. It was shrill, in its...
by Alexis David | Apr 25, 2018
“Deer herds form quickly for protection from predators” -Riverwoods Preservation Council Back then, you would have mistaken me for a happy person. Bright, cheerful. The kind of young woman you wanted your lost-in-his-dreams-of-moneyed-youth son to marry. You...
by Samuel Rafael Barber | Apr 18, 2018
I have always enjoyed a deceptively simple word problem. When used in this context, the adverb could mean both that the word problem is deceptive in pretending simplicity, but also that it is simple despite its deceptively intimidating appearance. The...