The Age of Worry | Yvonne Cha

My real life is a mess, that’s true. I’ve been using my mom’s bank account to pay people for stuff on Venmo without her knowing, and now she’s filed a complaint for fraud. Do I tell her it’s me, I’m sorry, I never have enough money, I am always buying something for myself and occasionally for others too. Bella Hadid gave away $25,000 worth of coats to the Bowery Mission. If I hadn’t bought a bunch of shitty Zara blazers the other week I would have saved enough to have enough to actually help someone, is that it…?

Innisfree | Masha Kisel

After that first sighting, I shadowed the woman as she tapped along her walking staff. I visited the vegan Nepali restaurant where she ate, the Shakhti gift shop where she worked. Inside the employee-owned Café Assisi, I ordered a Rooibos tea and mimicked her blissful smile into the rising steam. I lingered by the community bulletin board. Reiki sessions. Bikes for sale. Missing pets.

An Interview | Saborna Roychowdhury on Class, Muslim Stereotypes, and her new novel, Everything Here Belongs To You

Saborna Roychowdhury’s novel, Everything Here Belongs to You, written in the aftermath of 9/11 and the subsequent backlash against Muslims, takes on the ambitious task of addressing the vast gulf of prejudice across nations, religions, and classes by brilliantly bringing together under one roof all the characters who embody different positions in this geopolitical conflict that spans nations, from the US to Afghanistan and India.

Sentiments and Directions from an Unappreciated Contrarian Writer’s Widow | Jean Marc Ah-Sen

A life in harmony with others is a wasted one.

A man’s character is usually the opposite of that which masquerades on his face; for this reason, moderation appears to be the greatest of hidden human faults, while at the same time the most difficult to apprehend.

Apparently, never let an opportunity go by to befoul a well-heeled fellow’s banquet table.

An Interview | Jonathan Garfinkel on Georgian Theater, the Duplicity of the Soviet Union, and his debut novel

“No one is who they say they are, not even myself,” reflects performance artist Tamar Tumanishvili halfway through Jonathan Garfinkel’s funny and wild debut novel, In a Land without Dogs the Cats Learn to Bark. Tamar is about to begin a three-day bus ride from Istanbul to Tbilisi in order to investigate the mysterious past of her mentor, academic Rachel Grabinsky, whose recent death has led Tamar to reassess both Rachel’s identity and her own.

An Interview | Mai Nardone on Thai Identity, Class, and His First Story Collection

“Only you farang are so easy to come and and leave,” yells Nam to her American husband, Rick, in “Easy,” a story that sits at the emotional and temporal core of Welcome Me to the Kingdom, Mai Nardone’s debut collection of short fiction. The reason why Nam is upset is that their family has just moved from their high-rise condo back to their old townhouse. It’s 1997 and Rick—like so many others in Thailand, foreign and local—has seen his fortunes reverse due to the Asian financial crisis. This reversal puts strain on a relationship already on shaky ground.

Five Poems | Laura Goldin

Laura Goldin is a publishing lawyer in New York. Her recent poems appear or are forthcoming in a number of literary journals including Driftwood Press, San Pedro River Review, Apple Valley Review, Mom Egg Review, One Art, and Rogue Agent. Earlier poems appeared in The Comstock Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Bellevue Literary Review.

Kenyon Archive Report | Naben Ruthnum

Two years ago, a National Review piece describing Augustus Kenyon as “a somehow universally-beloved black Kissinger” elicited zero comment from the man or his foundation and ended the career of its author, Jurgen Schilze. Schilze works in industrial sourcing now, and we wanted to clarify that he is not either of us. We’re only mentioning him here to protect him from rumour and any harassment that he hasn’t earned himself. We—and we is the only way we’ll be identifying ourselves in this post—arrived at our idea to hack the digital lockbox containing the Augustus Kenyon archive after reading Schilze’s article. Not from Jurgen’s many borderline-racist arguments and his repeated elision of facts that worked against his portrayal of Kenyon as a ruthless manipulator, but from the shadows cast by gaps in Kenyon’s biography, the empty zones that Schilze pointed out.

Moth | J. M. Wong

Her cheeks had sunken so drastically that her cheekbones were much more pronounced than usual, giving her a very sharp edge. Her lips sagged, corners of her mouth drooping. The distance between her nose and chin was reduced. A bit of dark hair sprouted underneath her nose and on her chin as if she was starting to grow a beard. Without her teeth, her face had partially collapsed.

Excerpt from Psychic Lectures | Lee Suksi

You’ve felt like this since you became conscious at four years old. Always rushing to smother your sibling with a blanket to protect them from the cold. You can be too much. You want with an adrenal magnitude. You want the squares of sky in between the skyline, you want the sweet young trees, you want the girl bent over on the side of the passing bus, orange juice, pie and big drinks of wine.

Toronto 488 | Aaron Kreuter

That night, I feverishly read through the novel, sitting at my mother’s kitchen table in the dark, my cup of coffee long cold beside me. This was it. This was what I had been trying to do for all those years. The novel’s characters grew up in Jewish Montreal in the sixties and seventies, moved to Toronto in the eighties, bringing with them their dramas, their prejudices, their recipes, their joys.

Postcard From the Edge | Sara McAulay

I closed my eyes. The narrow rocky trail. The deep, deep canyon. My stomach reeled. No guardrail, no parachute, no wings, and me with no terminal illness. Me, weaker than I’d ever suspected I could be. “How soon? I’ve got deadlines. Could we wait till Fall?”

She laughed again, then coughed, coughed again, her whole frame wracked. “For you,” when she could speak, “for you, I’ll buy a postcard.”

Tear | Jared Daniel Fagen

Jared Daniel Fagen is the author of The Animal of Existence (Black Square Editions, 2022). His prose poems, essays, and conversations have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, Lana Turner, and Asymptote, among other publications. He is the editor and publisher of Black Sun Lit, a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, and an adjunct lecturer at the City College of New York. Born in Jeollanam-do, South Korea, he lives in Brooklyn and the western Catskills.