Six poems by Alyse Knorr

In Their Land A man sells thousands of balloons on the shore of the sea they have made. Alice buys them all. Gives Jenny the pink ones and keeps the yellows, lets the rest go easing up into the sky. Jenny says, If I were an old building I’d want to be by the ocean. […]

Five poems by Sarah Carson

The Accident For months I held your picture between my two left fingers. I kept returning to the crash site asking the workers there if they’d found anything else that looked like you. They put me on television and I said I’d always remember, the screech of the wheel wells on the pavement, the screaming […]

“Weight Loss” by Colleen Morrissey

She’s been losing weight. She’s worked hard. It’s mostly been through exercise, since she knew she could never stop eating what she likes. She was always a blueberry girl, ovoid and squishy. She had a good personality and laughed very loudly because that’s what you’re expected to do when you’re fat. Mostly, it has been […]

What It Means To Live In A Body: A Talk With Catherine Chung

Catherine Chung is the author of the novel Forgotten Country, which was published by Riverhead Books in March 2012. She is a Granta New Voice, and the assistant fiction editor of Guernica Magazine. She has taught creative writing at The University of Leipzig and Cornell University, and she currently lives in New York City. *** UFR: First off, how would […]

“Wind Chime” by Shellie Zacharia

When my grandmother pulls a deck of cards from the pocket of her dress and says, “Let’s play gin,” I say, “Let’s drink gin.” She shakes her head and says, “I don’t drink.” She did years ago. I haven’t seen my grandmother in a long time. I live five states away and I don’t like […]

A Reminder That The World Doesn’t Stop: A Conversation with James Tadd Adcox

James Tadd Adcox’s work has appeared in TriQuarterly, The Literary Review, PANK, Barrelhouse, Mid-American Review, and Another Chicago Magazine, among other places. He is the author of The Map of the System of Human Knowledge. He lives in Chicago. *** Used Furniture Review: How did your story collection, The Map of the System of Human Knowledge, develop for you? Was it piece […]

Camille Griep’s Our House: Keep On Movin’

This is the latest in Camille Griep’s Our House. To go to the column page, please click here. “Keep on moving, don’t stop like the hands of time. The time will come, come one day. Why do people choose to live their lives this way?” – Soul II Soul, Keep On Movin’ # Last October, […]

Review: Watch the Doors As They Close

The Reviewed: Watch the Doors As They Close by Karen Lillis The Reviewer: Joellyn Powers *** Karen Lillis’ novella, Watch the Doors As They Close, is the kind of story you want to read when there is a window of time you need to fill for a bit, preferably an hour or two. I read it in one […]

Colin Dickey’s The Canny Valley: True Enough: What This Column Is About

This is the latest in Colin Dickey’s The Canny Valley. To go to the column page, please click here. I began to think we were really reaching a crisis in prose writing about two months ago, when the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi reported that NPR had announced that they were toying with the idea of fact-checking […]

“Have Some Faith in Loneliness” by Geoff Watkinson

For the first time in my life—at the age of twenty-five—I live entirely alone.  No family.  No roommate.  Just me.  I’ve been teaching college writing and taking writing workshops while living in the pool house of a local brewery owner in Norfolk, Virginia for just shy of a year.  The pool house is 1100 square […]