One night, washing up after dinner, I hear the click of the side-gate. A dark-haired figure lopes past the window and my husband calls out, ‘Joey’s here.’ My body …
The Best Ever (Louise Swinn)
My dog Soda had just been coughing up a furball when he put his weight on one side and rested his head on the paw that was up on its …
SOME OF THE THINGS THEY TEACH ME: an interview with Louise Swinn
BEL WOODS I have a fondness for the stories that sneak up on you long after you and the story have parted, that seize you when you least expect it. …
Potential band names (Finnigan and Brother)
Okay so it’s time you started a band. I know, you’ve put it off for ages, but it’s halfway through 2011 and you promised your grandma. But, what will you …
Tissue (Paul Hetherington)
He thought of his family: how his mother had been locked into grief about something she couldn’t name and was passionately present or strangely, remotely apart; how his father …
THE PAINFUL AND THE THREATENING: an interview with Maria Takolander
WILL HEYWARD I recently read your story A Roānkin Philosophy of Poetry (winner of the ABR Short Story Prize), which takes the form of a monologue. The story is ironic, …
Instructions From God (Maria Takolander)
1. Clothe yourself in sky, gag your greedy mouth, and with a stick brush the barren dust you walk lest you tread on a single creature of mine for …
The Fourth Bus Stop (Peter Farrar)
The bus rumbles under him like a rushing heartbeat. He reverses, watching the cyclone fence edge closer in the trembling rear vision. “Yosi!” shouts the supervisor. “We can probably …
03 by Jean-Christophe Valtat (Ben Carmichael)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010 Translated from the French by Mitzi Angel The unnamed narrator of Jean-Christophe Valtat’s 03 is a seething mind. His thoughts, which comprise the novella’s uninterrupted, …
The White Silence after the Full-stop: Jean-Christophe Valtat's 03
Review by Ben Carmichael The unnamed narrator of Jean-Christophe Valtat’s 03 is a seething mind. His thoughts, which comprise the novella’s uninterrupted, paragraphless soliloquy, obsess over such topics typical to …