Osasere Ewansiha: How was the writing process of Dancing Between the Raindrops different from your novel, The Talking Drum, or other works? Lisa Braxton: I wasn’t working on a full narrative. I was not attempting to write like I did in fiction, (like my novel) a story...
Bradley steered his Chevy S-10 through the dark to the back of the Campbell property to drop off the deer. He saw Dewayne back there discussing something into a cordless phone, pacing across the open-aired shed where deer and other game were processed. In a past life...
One I know it’s cliché to start with the face in the mirror, but Cassiopeia, how can we begin any other way? Your high cheekbones, arched eyebrows shading ochre eyes, stately nose, and strong chin. Your hair, sometimes blonde, sometimes chestnut, coiled atop your head...
An excerpt from the forthcoming novel The Opening of the Mouth Jade hadn’t mentioned this train ride to her mother. When they’d spoken recently, she’d filled any space that had opened for it in their conversation with some remark about rising crime, gossip from the...
Rey M. Rodríguez An Interview with Sergio Troncoso Sergio Troncoso was born to Mexican immigrants in the Ysleta neighborhood of El Paso, Texas. The family lived in a colonia near the border in a house that Troncoso's parents built, without electricity or running water...
Vandana Khanna Stardust & Destiny Meena wakes with a dry mouth and swirls of blue-black marks on the back of her hand—a fake bruise indicating every club or bar that she’d been to over the weekend. The previous nights’ restless revelry resulting in a cluster of...
Read an interview with the author here. Jeneé Skinner Mother Goose An old woman gave birth to four eggs. Gold and cradled by tree roots and ribbons inside her house. Their births were ugly, complicated by forceps and fluorescent lighting, but the loving made it worth...
She Was Never the Birds Heavy bodies fall into me as the train brakes and then jerks forward. At each stop, it lets out a prolonged shriek like that of a fussy child. There is a map nailed to the wall that resembles the inside of the human body: green, red, and blue...
You Can Say Sorry They don’t come home for all sorts of reasons. Some explanations feel legitimate, others courteous; some are downright lies, but what are you to do? My daughter Jeanie was meant to come home last Friday, but she didn’t. She called saying she got...