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...
by Michael Walsh | Apr 9, 2018
Hiram had been avoiding the gay son of his recently deceased friend Tru Rasmussen. First, prior to his friend’s passing, he had run into the young man, Eldon, and his fiancé, Jasper, when they were registering for wedding gifts at Wal-Mart. At the time,...
by Sofie Verraest | Mar 22, 2018
Moment of Truth Look, it was a moment of truth, that’s the point. It was the kind of absolute and pure moment where everything would get streamlined and steered in a particular direction that, at least for the time being, would be final. We’d been going for a...
by AnnElise Hatjakes | Feb 26, 2018
THIS STORY WAS A FINALIST FOR THE 2017 NEIL SHEPARD PRIZE The night before Elsa left, she and her husband, Landon, discussed the difference between azure and powder blue. Decisions had to be finalized before she left to do archaeological...
