215 pages

Issue No. 124

Presenting Matthew McIntosh’s novella-as-screenplay, “The Christmas Party.” Evoking a bygone era of Hollywood, this cinematic holiday story follows a set of misfits and dreamers on a romantic quest from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

Fiction
Featuring “Cannon,” debut fiction by Allan Martín Nava Sosa.

Brittany Bronson’s “The Behavior Chart”: a kindergarten teacher and her severely ill student try to make their way back into each others’ good graces.

Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s “The Kyiv Symphony”: “Aeroflot planes have stopped flying overseas, and he suspects that before long the borders will be closed, the Iron Curtain grinding back in place. It’s hard to imagine the future, if he and his compatriots were to have one.”

Sandra Newman’s “Happy Family”: “But children do grow away from their parents. They
differentiate themselves and leave the nest. Then the nest is lost, is not a nest but a ruin, and this is not a tragedy.”

Nonfiction
Rhoda Huffey’s essay “No, No Thank You”: on the writer being presented with an opportunity, and the cost of having “said no to some important things, things that may not sound important.”

Poetry
Liala Zaray

Art
Sculptor Natasha Dikareva

*Pre-orders will ship in early December