From the Back Cover
Breaker
"It won't make any difference in the end."
"Nothing makes any difference in the end, Chuck. It's the middle that counts."
Bruce McAllister
Ombra
He saw his friend's face, too, bright as day, the man he would become, skinny legs giving way to muscle, face lengthening, turning angular and not unhandsome, forgiving his American friend for what happened because life is long and in it there is always dark as well as light, and a friend, no matter what has happened, is always like the sun.
Yosefa Raz
Sabbath Queens
Her mother died at age one hundred and one, after a four-course lunch at the Waldorf Astoria, where she went every day for lunch. The waiters loved her, though she insisted on wiping her mouth on the edge of the tablecloth.
Aaron Gwyn
The Offering
On weekends, she would sit at her desk and write long letters to her mother and sisters, receive replies just as lengthy, speaking of matters they had not been able to discuss.
M. Allen Cunningham
The Best Man
It used to be that music was always quiet like this. Nowadays, as we all know, music can be listened to over and over, at any volume. Not so back in Beethoven's day. Back then, music like this still seemed magic to whoever heard it, and the world was altogether quieter.
Susan Jackson Rodgers
This Day
Other people are there. This is the ICU. Other people are visiting people in the ICU and their people have not died yet. Maybe their people won't die.
Paul Mandelbaum
Animal Shelter
"The guy who used to run things here," he'd said, "sometimes got a little bendy with the rules. But this I cannot do for you."
Catherine Ryan Hyde
Disappearances
He was driving down the old Cotter road, making a beeline for the incident, though he didn't know it just yet.
Silas Zobal
My Father's House
Pop sat spread-legged on the porch with constellations of peanut shells scattered about his toes, calling Orion or Andromeda or Corona Borealis at the heavens, while Mom, who was humming softly, faded into the blue of the house to peruse the bible and eat saltines in front of the TV.
Dalia Azim
Going Home
"How is it okay?" she said as she reached behind him to flush the toilet. "Heaven waits," he said, gesturing to the bathroom's low ceiling.
Robert Vivian
Their Mouths Were Full of Rain
She's aspiring to moon size as the tides pull on the earth in opposite directions.
Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis
Sundress
"Bone-secrets of the moon," my daddy called them. Those things you whisper deep in prayers, the moon hears and keeps safe, deep nested, way down in the sweet dark marrow of her bones.
Shimon Tanaka
The Flight Back
Jun had to admit now that perhaps the man he had blamed was not to blame; or that, yes, he was to blame, but not to the degree Jun had previously assumed.
Mary Yukari Waters
Interview by Sherry Ellis
The most likely answer is that I was tired of third person at the time, and needed a change. Isn't that mundane? But sometimes we do make artistic choices for mundane reasons.
About the Author
Bruce McAllister has published fiction and nonfiction in national magazines, literary quarterlies, and year’s-best anthologies. For twenty years he taught creative writing and directed writing programs at the University of Redlands. He has three wonderful children—Liz, Ben, and Annie—and is married to the choreographer Amelie Hunter. They live in southern California.
Yosefa Raz grew up in Jerusalem. She is a graduate of the UC Davis Creative Writing Program, where she received the Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize two years in a row. Her book of poetry, In Exchange for a Homeland, was published by Swan Scythe Press in 2004. She currently lives in Berkeley. This is her first story in print.
Aaron Gwyn grew up on a farm in central Oklahoma. He received his PhD from the University of Denver, and now teaches at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Dog on the Cross, his story collection, was published in 2004 by Algonquin Books. His novel, Ink, is forthcoming from Algonquin as well. His stories have appeared in New Stories from the South, Black Warrior Review, American Literary Review, and once before in Glimmer Train.
M. Allen Cunningham’s fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Epoch, Boulevard, Wind, and other journals. He has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. His first novel, The Green Age of Asher Witherow, was published by Unbridled Books last year. He lives in Northern California’s Diablo Valley.
Susan Jackson Rodgers has an MFA from Bennington College. Her book, The Trouble with You Is, won the Mid-List Press First Series Award in Short Fiction and was published in 2003. Her stories have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Beloit Fiction Journal, StoryQuarterly, North American Review, and other journals. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Kansas State University, and lives in Manhattan, Kansas with her husband and three children.
Paul Mandelbaum’s novel-in-stories, Garrett in Wedlock, was published by Berkley Books in 2004. “Animal Shelter†will be included in an upcoming collection, Adriane on the Edge. He has edited two anthologies, First Words: Earliest Writings from Favorite Contemporary Authors (Algonquin, 2000) and 12 Short Stories and Their Making (Persea, 2005). His fiction has appeared in DoubleTake, Harvard Review, the Massachussetts Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and the Southern Review, and has received a James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award. He lives with his wife in Culver City, California, and can be reached through his website, www.paulmandelbaum.com.
Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of the novel Funerals for Horses (Russian Hill Press, 1997); a collection of short fiction, Earthquake Weather (Russian Hill Press, 1998); and the novels Pay It Forward (Simon & Schuster, 2000), Electric God (Simon & Schuster, 2000), and Walter’s Purple Heart (Simon & Schuster, 2002). Pay It Forward was adapted into a Warner Brothers movie. More than forty-five of her short stories have been published in the Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and other journals.
Silas Zobal has fiction published or forthcoming in the Missouri Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, New Orleans Review, Shenandoah, Glimmer Train, and oth
