Kathleen Bryson

The little man in the machine blows a little horn and this will be my last sermon to the lot of you. Artificial intelligence drips through the computer that allows us to peer through the ages, and the little man caught inside blows toot toot.

Gabriela Ruivo Trindade
Translated by Andrew McDougall

Fourth Voice (Maria Filomena)
Estremoz, 3 April 1974

Since my Zé went to war, things have been tough for me. A dizziness in my head I can barely stay on my feet with, an unbearable ringing in my ear.

Monica Macansantos

The night Andrew received his mother’s call, he was unbuttoning his shirt in front of his bathroom mirror, savoring the lazy, pleasant buzz that lingered in his head after a night of drinking and sauntering down the warm, noise-filled streets of Makati with friends who could drop everything at a moment’s notice to celebrate his good fortune with him on a Tuesday night.

Nadia Villafuerte
Translated by Pennell Somsen

It was as if the mirror reflected only my image and not hers. We shared a room, but my imprint was everywhere: my clothes, my dressing table with sprays, my bottles of glitter and perfume, my calendar attached to the wall with thumbtacks.

The work of the critic is often relegated to criticism in the most literal sense—which is to say negativity—and it is a rare treat to engage in true praise. It reminds one why one set out to be a critic in the first place: for the love and admiration one feels for great art.

Doina Ruști
Translated by Ileana Marin

I. The Secret Life of Adela Nicolescu

1. Last year, sometime in November, I noticed the novel in the window of the Sadoveanu bookstore. It stood out because of the big Arial letters of its title: The Secret Life of Adela Nicolescu Told by Florian Pavel.

Curt Saltzman

Dad and I were working the Rotary Club booth that year at the Halloween fair. We’d curtained off a space in the rear of the booth and taped a cardboard sign I’d stenciled with the words “JACK’S DIME FORTUNES” to an upright.

Rebeca Abidail Flores

When Rosa and Maria first arrived, the candles were already lit and in rows of one red, one white, one red, one white, all with the sticker of La Virgen de Guadalupe facing the street. There was a small altar set up on the chain-link fence near the railroad tracks.

Bri Stoever

“My wife will be home soon.”
“Don’t worry about her.” She tosses her long ebony hair over her shoulder, trying to hook her bra. He feels like he should help her, but the paranoia keeps him at bay. Every car that trots up the road sounds like the slamming front door. Each time a headlight passes the window like a helicopter searchlight, his heart seizes.

Jesus Quintero

In 1986 we moved from Linda, California, where I went to Cedar Lane School with all the migrant children, to the neighboring town of Olivehurst, where I would go to school with the whites.

Kenny Williams

She had just turned twenty-six when she was called to step in, at the last minute, as the attending at the Weatherall Home for Girls.

Chuck Mobley

I live on a mostly deserted island on the edge of the Sonoran Desert in Southern California. It is an actual 25-acre island surrounded by a 25-acre lake, which is surrounded by a 200-acre, 18-hole golf course.

John Better Armella
Translated by Michelle Mirabella

An army of red ants crosses my path on the way from the living room to the kitchen. Marching in a perfect line, they carry an enormous, shiny cockroach.

Mialise Carney

Mother charges me per minute. I sit in her creme-colored office, my ankles tucked delicately behind one another, clammy hands clasped and bunching sweatily into the thick folds of my skirt.

Julieta García González
Translated by Toshiya Kamei

Adriana bit her nails—most of them had jagged edges—circled around the table a few times, and sat down to wait.

Kelly Krumrie

Every year at St. Agatha’s there is a physical. Each homeroom takes turns lining up down the hall, and a few sisters and the nurse hand out clipboards to the girls.

Hwang Jungeun
Translated by Mirae Yang

Hanssi and Kossi had lost their way around the area.
Gom and Mim found them at the corner of a street. Hanssi was wearing a trapper hat and Kossi had a scarf wrapped around her neck.

Deven James Philbrick

Edna Steinsaltz was the kind of woman who, wrinkled face aged with wisdom and wine, always answered your questions with another less clear question.

Alexia Nader

A girl from Merjan’s school got a boyfriend, which would have been the beginning of the same life as every woman in the town—girlfriend, wife, mother, lover, corpse—not of interest at all, except the couple got into the habit of playing a dangerous game in open air.

Jorge Largo
Translated by David Pegg

I don’t really know why I don’t like watching movies at home. My girlfriends set up their devices in bed, in their living rooms; they place their computers, their cell phones, on a side table.

Masha Tupitsyn

In Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse, the word futile appears in a section called “Waiting.” In it, Barthes writes: “I am waiting for an arrival, a return, a promised sign. This can be futile, or immensely pathetic: in Erwartung (Waiting), a woman waits for her lover, at night, in the forest.

Casey Plett

I was out front at the bar after closing time with a bunch of other weirdos. This short guy with curly hair and I started talking. You want to get a king can? His name was Owen.

Kyle Lung

Beneath the redwoods and past the dumpsters, children scream like they’re playing or being sawed in half. I scratch Matilda’s head, she loves that, she hums.

Eddie P. Gomez

We took a flight from San Francisco to Oahu on a balmy morning in early October, risking a small window of opportunity. In Honolulu, high rises poked at the sky in the distance as the taxi raced away from the airport.

Margherita Arco

Just as we were finishing breakfast downstairs, a loud bang resonated through the clapboard house; our father had let the door of the master bedroom fall to a close, announcing his advance on the breakfast table.

Leanne Grabel

We talked about joy. It was my eighth session with Dr. Misaka, a small woman with beautiful shoes the color of cognac. Kaiser had referred me out-of-network for ten sessions with a psychiatrist.