Fiction
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An Old Man, A Handgun
“Nature isn’t playing tricks. Heaven isn’t playing favorites. Everything, every being, is abiding by the rules.” But being rule-abiding is no guarantee of a peaceful coexistence. In Jarupat Petchawaret’s story “An Old Man, A Handgun,” translated by Peera Songkünnatham, a village attempts to deal with a new influx of king cobras.
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Ace Annunciation
“Angel moved closer and pressed their forehead to hers. ‘What do you think, Maura? You obviously don’t want to be responsible for continuing your own species. But wouldn’t you like to help create something more advanced instead?’” Trudy Lewis’s novella explores the violation of a woman who thinks she has liberated herself from the tyranny of human sexuality in a future that isn’t as utopian as she’d believed.
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Coming Around
“My daughter’s email about the feeling brought on by the Golden Gate Bridge’s orange glow was no coincidence but was likely passed on to her by some ancestor”: A man works through the unreliable, yet indispensable inheritances of memory and family in this piece by Suo Er, translated by Grace Najmulski.
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Nosegay on a Marble Plinth
“She was looking at me and I wanted to cry again because I didn’t know what she was, but I felt the warmth of her, and it was different than heat.” A series of visits from her dead mother stirs up a woman’s long-buried feelings and memories in Elizabeth Bull’s story.
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Hart
“’Are you crazy?’ Zhanna punched him in the shoulder. She was giving off a pungent wave of animal, earth, and rot.” In Sophia Andrukhovych’s “Hart,” translated by Ali Kinsella, you will share the transformative encounter of a woman, a man, and a hart in an imagined future Ukraine.
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The Dreams and Damnation of Bishop Koyle
“The figure then looked Koyle in the eye and said, ‘Brother Koyle, do you believe that even a man’s lust for gold can be consecrated for the work of the Lord?’” Revelation sets a man on a path that will transform geography and transcend reality in this excerpt from Jeremy Grimshaw’s novel-in-progress.