short story Archives – Page 2 of 3

In the Black, With Jessica

by Christian Kiefer

April 20, 2021

Posted on April 20, 2021 (April 19, 2021) by Zack Ravas

The sound of a car gearing up the ashen road. Chuck thought at first that it had to be someone from Cal Fire or another crew but then the radio crackled and Bob told him it was a civilian. “Copy,” he said, and then, after releasing the button: “Fuck.” No part of him that was

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‘You Will Never Be Forgotten’ by Mary South: Life in Front of the Screen

by Zack Ravas

April 8, 2020

Posted on April 8, 2020 (April 6, 2020) by Zack Ravas

Under typical circumstances, it’s likely the literary community would be celebrating the release of Mary South’s first book, You Will Never Be Forgotten (240 pages; FSG Originals), a collection of ten dark and crystalline stories that announces the arrival of a distinct voice in contemporary fiction. But these are not normal circumstances, and it’s difficult for any author to garner attention right now, let alone one making their debut. Yet the mordant wit and biting irony in You Will Never Be Forgotten, and its complex understanding of reality’s often cruel reversals, resonates with launching the book when the world is […]

Ring Around the Equator, Pockets Full of Acres

by Chia-Chia Lin

March 5, 2020

Posted on March 5, 2020 (March 4, 2020) by Zack Ravas

Chia-Chia Lin is the author of the novel The Unpassing (FSG). Below is an excerpt from her short story “Ring Around the Equator, Pockets Full of Acres” from the Bay Area Issue, which you can purchase at the link. You can also apply to our Fiction Workshop with Chia-Chia Lin by submitting here. When Delepine first started running, the air shredded her lungs. Like inhaling powdered glass. After a run, she kept right on sweating and her face kept coloring, peaking at its maximum carmine hue when she was doing something embarrassingly low-impact, like sitting at her desk and rattling […]

Mrs. Sorry

by Gabriela Garcia

January 9, 2020

Posted on January 9, 2020 (January 26, 2020) by Zack Ravas

The first time I see her, she is buying cold cream. What she wants, she says, is a moisturizer that doesn’t feel heavy, doesn’t sit on her skin like so much weight. I lay out her options: whipped argan oil, cold-pressed and refined; our new micro-beading exfoliating lotion with gentle 7 percent alpha hydroxy; the best-selling hyaluronic acid-plus-B-vitamins gel with all-day-stay technology, patent pending. Her red fingernails tap the counter as she slides a credit card with her other hand. She buys all of them. A few days later I see her across my booth in the shoe department. She […]

Session Drummer

by Tommy Orange

November 28, 2019

Posted on November 28, 2019 (January 26, 2020) by Zack Ravas

I’m on a train and it’s Saturday so I don’t have to work, but when I’m not working Saturday I’m usually working. I mean it’s work only because I get paid and need the money, but it’s playing drums—like a drum set in a studio. I’m a sometimes session drummer working mainly at this studio in West Oakland where people know me as a good enough drummer to call when they need a good enough drummer for a usually mediocre album project. What I do for a living, as they say, is to wash windows. I wash building windows no […]

‘Instructions for a Funeral’ by David Means: A Location of Deeper Grace

by Arianna Casabonne

April 26, 2019

Posted on April 26, 2019 (August 22, 2019) by Zack Ravas

David Means’ latest collection, Instructions for a Funeral (208 pages; FSG), further secures his position as a standout writer of short fiction. Featuring Means’ customary idiosyncratic style, with sentences that span halfway down the page—or more—the book’s prose takes you on a trek, one that demands complete attention from the reader, but repays that attention. Through his dense, carefully crafted sentences, Means transports us through time and place, interweaving action with his characters’ inner ruminations and flashbacks, and in the process touching on the most tender and enigmatic parts of existence. In a section titled “Confessions,” the author discusses what […]

‘Mothers’ by Chris Power: The Fragility of Connection

by Zack Ravas

February 28, 2019

Posted on February 28, 2019 (September 3, 2019) by Zack Ravas

The characters in Mothers (287 pages; FSG), the debut story collection by London writer Chris Power, occupy tenuous positions in their personal lives. Many of the ten stories here hone in on the bitter resentments and petty debates that arise when a romantic relationship has barely formed or, alternately, reached its breaking point. In “The Crossing,” protagonist Ann comes to regret her backpacking weekend with recent lover Jim: Several times, in the weeks since she had met him, Ana had thought Jim was telling her what she had wanted to hear. Even before she agreed to this weekend away the […]

‘Carpe Diem’ by Lucia Berlin, ZYZZYVA No. 1, Spring Issue

by Lucia Berlin

January 1, 2019

Posted on January 1, 2019 (March 6, 2020) by Zack Ravas

Lucia Berlin was an American short story writer, who developed a small, devoted following, but did not reach a mass audience during her lifetime. She rose to sudden literary fame eleven years after her death, in August 2015, with FSG’s publication of a volume of selected stories, A Manual for Cleaning Women. ZYZZYVA published a number of Berlin’s stories during the Eighties and Nineties, and her work can be found in Issues 1, 4, 18, and 31. Below is her story “Carpe Diem” in its entirety from ZYZZYVA Issue 1. Most of the time I feel all right about getting old. Some things give me a pang, like […]

‘Mama’ by Emma Copley Eisenberg, ZYZZYVA No. 113, Fall Issue

by Emma Copley Eisenberg

December 21, 2018

Posted on December 21, 2018 (March 6, 2020) by Zack Ravas

Emma Copley Eisenberg’s work has appeared in Granta, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, and other publications. Her first book, The Third Rainbow Girl, will be published by Hachette Books in 2020. Her short story “Mama” appears in ZYZZYVA No. 113. You can read an excerpt from the beginning of the story below: My daughter’s new girlfriend is big. Big mouth, big breast, a tuft of hair so curly it looks permed. My daughter Beth has one girlfriend already, the pint-sized Tomboy who drops by every Easter and Christmas. Mark my words, says Donna from black-belt class, looking over my […]

No Escaping the Entanglements: ‘Certain American States’ by Catherine Lacey

by Caleigh Stephens

September 6, 2018

Posted on September 6, 2018 (September 3, 2019) by Zack Ravas

A self-described “not-widow” brings a newlywed couple to the grave of her ex-husband; a cartoonist with a massive trust fund tries to teach law students to watercolor as his marriage falls apart; a recent divorcee obsesses over whether his ex-wife’s latest fiction is about him. The characters in acclaimed novelist Catherine Lacey’s debut story collection, Certain American States (208 pages; FSG), grapple with grief and their own loneliness. The collection is a deep dive into the human psyche, focusing on a memorable and flawed cast of narrators and their connections to others. There’s an emotional richness to these stories as […]

Heart Pangs: ‘Night Beast and Other Stories’ by Ruth Joffre

by Angela Yin

June 5, 2018

Posted on June 5, 2018 (September 4, 2019) by editor

“I think part of me has always believed love should be like this — painful and hidden, only making itself known when you least expect it and are unprepared for the damage it can do,” confesses Gemma in the titular story of Ruth Joffre’s Night Beast and Other Stories (190 pages; Grove Press). Many of the characters in this collection share Gemma’s belief, which is perhaps why they ultimately resign themselves to finding comfort in a lack of fulfillment, to being abandoned, to having their affections go unreciprocated — after all, love not only must be, but should be like […]

A Selection of the Writing You’ll Find in our Spring Issue No. 112

by ZYZZYVA Staff

May 30, 2018

Posted on May 30, 2018 (March 6, 2020) by editor

Here’s a sampling of some of the writing in Issue No. 112, which you can get today with a subscription to ZYZZYVA: San Francisco Loved Us Once, an essay by JOSHUA MOHR: We stampeded to this magnificent speck known as San Francisco because we were too queer, too punk, too arty. We were the wrong color or born with the wrong genitalia. We were too fat or too tattooed or too sick or our own family simply despised us. Other places, we were easy targets. We were gristle trapped in a bully’s teeth. So we flocked here because it called to us, San […]