In London, I moved slower – I spent long afternoons walking aimlessly, thinking deeply, dreaming in quiet. Now in New York, I move with purpose, urgency, chasing things before they slip away. Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction A Tale of Two Benches Some places are not meant to be destinations but pauses, … Read more
“I’m Anne Tolstoi Foster’s daughter. I think you worked together.” The man squinted and looked up over his glasses. Then he pushed the thinning hair back from his forehead and cleared his throat, a slow gurgling sound, and returned to the paper he was reading.“Well, lucky you,” he mumbled, but loud enough I could hear … Read more
There’s some things you don’t quite understand until you’re older. If you’re young, and you think you do, you don’t. But then there’s some other things, that you also don’t understand, that you assume at some point you will. Tragedy. Calamity. Miracle. If you think you understand these, you still don’t, no matter how gray … Read more
Gladys didn’t want wealth. She didn’t want status. She didn’t even want a slightly nicer apartment in the living districts, with windows that weren’t reinforced steel. No. What she wanted—what she insisted upon—was a position as lunch lady at one of the Human Containment Facilities. Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction The … Read more
There was a slight pause and then he said, ‘Were you best friends?’ ‘Spoken like a true only child. We were sisters.’ ‘Aren’t sisters supposed to be best friends?’ Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Books We Were Having Such a Good Time It was probably about a month after we met that Ben … Read more
The EM systems could run for decades, but in time, after the ship left the solar system, they would have to be shut down. The Freeman would coast along on any final inertial vector, forever. The captain’s voice, with urgency. “STAN?” STAN made an instant decision, logged an internal note accessible only to itself: “Is … Read more
On the outside, I may seem dormant, but beneath it all, I am transforming. Like the fungi working on decay, I am breaking down what’s left of a former season into something fertile. The place I once called home has grown too tight, like an exoskeleton I have outgrown. I feel the pressure of it, … Read more
My mother has also been diagnosed with cancer. I wonder if she can put it in a box and send it to me, package it in a large Priority Mail box with my sister’s. I can hide them here with the other boxes they’ve sent here. Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction Eulogies … Read more
My dad uttered the term “dignity” for the first time when I was sixteen. Its connotations and contradictions were boundless. Dignity was an inherent possession of all beings. Dignity was a state of mind. But dignity was dependent on action. Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction The Hollows of Maine Dignity made … Read more
The stranger curled up in her bed was particularly out of place. He was a spaceman, completely in uniform. His white thermal suit was covered in patches of dirt. The dark visor didn’t allow the slightest glimpse of the spaceman’s face. There were all sorts of buttons and straps along the suit, and it looked … Read more