Our Latest Fiction Articles:

Not Looking
by Travis Craig
Excerpt - At the California Pizza Kitchen, Reagan Airport, D.C., I sit at my table watching the counter and hope that the Chicken Caesar Salad sandwich just “up” is not mine because I don’t like the way it looks.
It’s mine. More...

An Interview with Kathleen Alcalá
by Rob Johnson
Excerpt - My parents’ generation had to spend a great deal of time convincing people that Mexicans were capable of holding jobs outside the level of farm worker or menial labor, and part of this was showing an "advanced" view of the world. In the forties and fifties, this meant being very patriotic, giving your children "American" (British) names, and not appearing to be too superstitious or backwards. In other words, it was a class thing, and being Mexican was equated with being lower class. Of course it still is, but the ability of the writers in this collection to look at these symbols with irony, with affection and with an eye towards their aesthetic value shows the growth of an artistic and intellectual sophistication in our community. More...

On Writing a Novel: Three Letters from John Clellon Holmes
by James P. White
Excerpt - You ask about the novel I'm working on; how do I approach it? Well, the kernal of the idea came to me a long time ago. It came first as a one-act play, which never got beyond the most desultory note-taking. A few years later, I realized that it was a novel--that is, that I was as much interested in the three main characters as I was in the "plot"-idea. It expanded itself naturally, still keeping the severe time-limit-actions of the play-idea, but fleshed out with backgrounds, a stronger, denser sense of miieu, flashbacks, and other subsidiary characters. It germinated for a long time while I was engaged in doing another book. More...

A Crack in the Bubble
by Richard E. Zeikowitz
Excerpt - 7 P.M. was announced by the discordant sounding of church bells throughout the old city of Zurich. John was making his way along a path that followed the canal which separated the two old sections of the city. There was a late summer chill in the early evening air; the sun, a low hazy ball settled somewhere out of view. John, well accustomed by now to the periodic outpouring of church bells in European cities, walked with his hands deep in his jeans pockets, looking out on the canal which emptied into a broad lake. More...

Blood and Ceremony (from Treasures in Heaven)
by Kathleen Alcalá
Excerpt - "And then again, he allowed the bull to pass so close to him, that it practically creased his trousers. He did not even flinch. Did not even change expression. "

"They say it is his Indian blood that allows him to remain so calm," said Humberto animatedly." They say that he does not care if he lives or dies. "

"If that were true," said La Señorita, "he would be dead by now."

"Only on the third pass," Anslao went on, "did he plunge the sword into the bull’s back, as smooth as butter. The bull did not even buck. It looked up once, as though looking into his tormentor’s eyes, questioning his fate, and slumped to the ground. The crowd was on it’s feet, throwing hats and cushions. They gave Ponciano two ears and a tail. " More...

Emily Reed
by Dan Rogers
Excerpt - Emily Reed died two weeks ago, and I only heard Monday.

She rated an obituary in the New York Times, and I took notice, since it was subtitled "Librarian in ’59 Alabama Racial Dispute." As director of the Alabama Public Library Service Division, which lent books to libraries throughout the state, Reed chose to allow Garth Williams’ The Rabbits’ Wedding onto her shelves. From those shelves, the imagination could and did easily see the book pass into the hands of children. Most of Alabama’s literate children were, of course, white. And the book, which I have never read, features the nuptials of a black and a white rabbit. More...