"Yvonne" by Ciera Burch is the 2019 One City One Story all-city read selection for the city of Boston. One City One Story is an annual project of the Boston Book Festival, which prints and distributes 20,000 copies of the selected story for free throughout Greater Boston. Ciera Burch will appear at the Boston Book Festival for town hall discussions on both October 19 and October 20, in Copley Square and Dudley Square. For more information about the Boston Book Festival and One City One Story, please visit bostonbookfest. org . The story [...] more

Maya Detwiller's short story "Toads" explores the pains and rewards of adolescence through a child's habit of collecting toads. A giant supervising and creating miniature worlds, the story's narrator finds herself looking for a place--a place to fit, to belong, to grow in and away from. [...] more

The Great Confusion has occurred, and in its aftermath, Bea is looking for her daughter. Her husband has gone missing, too. Kari Lund-Teigen's "Keep in Touch" vividly evokes a dystopian world, as well as the lengths to which its inhabitants will go to to communicate and connect. [...] more

S. D. Jones' short story "The Ideal Reasoner" gives a comic and touching twist to relationship trouble, as a Shelockian AI creates upheaval in a marriage--only to bring about a surprising resolution. [...] more

"I don't have much time," says Dickie, the narrator of Bradford Philen's "What's Heavy". Dickie is a high-school kid, but he doesn't have much time--before his father's kidneys give out, before the coming hurricane hits, before Ophelia, the girl he's into, gives up on him. Dickie is under more than specific pressures on this one night when his many burdens weigh on him. [...] more

Frankie is a pet rat. And in Kaia Preus' story "Next Life," he is dying. As Zoe tries to soften his last moments, she tries, too, to find balance in her relationships with two men. Tenderness towards Frankie becomes her litmus test, but also the source of some surprising insights. [...] more

When a robber encounters a hungry Golden Retriever while breaking into a house, the encounter evokes a poignant monologue about how to treat a dog and how not to stock a refrigerator. And Andrea Johnston's "Feeding Champion" is about much more than that. It's about the responsibilities we have towards each other, and about how we do what's right even when promises change. [...] more

In 1970, the narrator and his several brothers drive off in a Duster to defend their mother's honor. The fact that most of them are high plays some role in the confusion that ensues. Alec Solomita's "Squirrel" is a tale of sibling allegiances and misunderstandings, told with tenderness and wit. [...] more

The husband who narrates Amy Lee Lillard's story "Head Like a Hole" watches, puzzled, as a perfectly round hole grows in his backyard. The growing hole, and the wife's ongoing vigil, tell a poignant story of self, integrity, and, ultimately, connection. [...] more

What is held, what holds you, in water or in air? Marsha McDonald's story "s w i m" raises and explores these questions through the story of a girl taught to swim by her uncle. Learning much more than that about her body's resilience, the narrator connects her experience to the terrors and enticements of deep water. [...] more

A group of high-school boys tests each other and themselves with the game of knuckles. From the pain of knuckles, to the release of getting high, to the sweet pleasure of a Charleston Chew, these boys feel everything, and try to pretend they can choose what they let in. "Hit Me" is a story--beautifully performed by Spatz--about aggression, recklessness, and surprising weakness. [...] more

A tattoo on a woman's body becomes the locus of a complex interaction between power and passivity in Kate Wisel's short story "Happy Hour". Within a relationship marked with bruises and broken bones, the tattoo raises questions of independence and escape. [...] more

A swamp is home to an imagined panther named "Fen" in Kate Lassell's eponymous story. Narrated by a precocious kid named Judith, the story follows a father and daughter fighting to preserve a threatened marsh--and working to sustain their small family after a tragic loss. [...] more

A thing as ordinary as a mailbox becomes the focus of all of one man's passions in Phil Shreck's eponymous story. Russell tilts not at windmills but at his mailboxes, old and new, and at a deep-seated sense of inadequacy. Shreck reads his darkly funny story aloud in a brilliant performance. [...] more

Since February is the shortest month, we think it's the perfect time for the shortest of stories. And so, we bring you that icon of long-ago pop culture, now modified for the post-cassette era: the mixtape. In one track, we've compiled six short pieces from The Drum's archives, from writers Matt Bell , Ron MacLean , Michelle Seaton , Cumi Ikeda , Allison Williams , and Nathan Poole . These are tales of snakes and tidepools, butchers and fish, identity and danger. [...] more

The anger and frustration of girls is at the core of Brandi Reissenweber's short story "Where We Found the Girls". As, one by one, four girls in a community are discovered in strange and mysterious circumstances, the townspeople must confront what they themselves have failed to see and understand. [...] more

A woman, her two sons, her ex, and a deer. Add to this the knife the ex is using to gut the animal and you have a family crisis of compelling drama. Cindy House's "Dear Deer" doesn't skimp on the suspense but finds humor too in this confrontation over much more than one hunted animal. [...] more

A young couple, a little girl, and a seaside carnival come together in this short piece by Lisa Piazza. They come together and they come apart, while the mother who narrates the piece ponders the funhouse-mirror quality of the new land she finds herself in after divorce. [...] more

Our partners the Boston Book Festival chose Daphne Kalotay’s “Relativity” as the selection for the 2017 One City One Story project. The story appeared in print--for the first time--in free booklets available throughout Boston. But you can listen to Daphne read it aloud herself here--and only here--on The Drum. [...] more

How fearless can you be? How fearless can you afford to be? In the "Parking Garage Late at Night" of Val Maloof's flash fiction, one woman's fear and imagination twine together as she faces danger. Maloof explores how the story the woman tells herself and the stories she's been told all her life--by her mother, by society--combine to save or abandon her. [...] more

In Josh Sheridan's complicated story "Faith," a woman negotiates the hypocrisy and exploitation of a small religious group. Whether you see the group as a cult or a religion, and whether you see the woman as a heretic or a believer will depend on your own ideas about faith. But Sheridan renders vividly the tense and passionate world in which his unnamed character wields the power of surrender and control. [...] more

A Nigerian woman's domination by her new husband forms the narrative of Hannah Onoguwe's "The Housewife" as, step by step, Aramide faces more and more restrictions--on what she can wear, whom she can visit, and finally where she can go. But confined to her house, visited only by the generator repairman, and allowed out only to have her fidelity tested by priests, Aramide discovers ways to subvert her husband's authority. Onoguwe's story brings surprise and delight in its lively telling. [...] more

There is a woman raking lizards down from a tree. There is a family to care for. There are errands to run. Our narrator wages war against the lizards who return each day, undefeated, but she fights other things, too, in a much more complicated battle. [...] more

The narrator of Jo-Ann Bekker's "Riptide" insists we can believe her. 'Believe me when I tell you,' she says, many times. The story asks us whether we can trust this tale of infidelity, and whether even the woman telling us the story is certain of anything beyond the strong pull of desire. [...] more

"Five Wishes" unfolds in as many episodes, each one telling a linked variation on a tale of a boy, his mother and father, a stream, a shovel, and a piece of purple quartz. Taken together, these episodes are like facets on a stone, revealing new insights on this little family while at the same time allowing us to see the heart of the story. [...] more

A train makes the perfect setting for this story about a woman in limbo--between jobs, between countries and cultures, between homes. Aine Greaney's "The Man on the Train" turns a conversation with a stranger into a study of belonging, as Lorna, Irish and recently arrived from her home in England, travels into Boston from her sister's suburban home. [...] more

In this subtle and tense story, James English sets us down among the complicated relationships within a family and a neighborhood and lets us watch a betrayal unfold. It's a variation of the tale of a stranger coming to town--only the stranger is already there, and the town is someone's family. [...] more

A group of children and their slightly inattentive parents are the time-honored ingredients for narrative mischief. In KL Pereira's "The Children's House," the mischief involves the slipping and sliding boundaries between one space and another, one family and another, one person and another. Pereira evokes an eerily calm world in which families and identities can be pilfered and misplaced as easily as an object from a mantlepiece. [...] more

The accidental meeting of former lovers shapes Daniel Higgins' "Some Plastic City Beyond. " Told mostly through dialogue, the story offers us the careful cadences of two people negotiating old wounds and new discoveries. [...] more

An earthquake shakes the narrator's world just as she is shocked by news of a friend's death. But it's in the violence done to the natural order that she registers her loss. Tending for a rabbit, the narrator of Katie DePasquale's "What The Spirit Rabbits Know" comes to understand some part of what makes us mortal and alive, what gives us a fragile resilience. [...] more

Sermonette and Tom meet at a concert. Tom is at the mic. Sermonette is watching. They go on to skirmish and flirt, resisting the monsters of Jane Flett's title even as those monsters grow within them. The narrative seethes with passion and inventive language as it takes us through this richly unconventional love story. [...] more

S. E. Clark's "Foxes" places us in an unsettling world part fairy tale, part parable, in which the innocent and the sinister battle in the lives of children. Clark's spare prose tells the tale of a small community preyed upon in subtle ways by the story's eponymous foxes. [...] more

Serotonin notwithstanding, Thanksgiving makes us hungry. Despite the torpor of the holiday, we become agitated, restless. Maria Mutch's "Appetites" immerses us in the restless and agitated world of a journey like so many on Thanksgiving: a trip to grandmother's house. In this short story first audio-published in The Drum in May 2014, Mutch revises the old tale, skewing fairy-tale familiarity with modern distortions. [...] more

A Brooklyn family wrestles with challenges in which the mundane swiftly becomes momentous. One child's impish use of a dried legume, another's need for order; a father's return from Iraq, a mother's rush to the emergency room: events and experiences combine in a tragicomic turmoil. [...] more

A lesson in fly fishing focuses the relationship between an Irish father and son. Looking for ways to connect, a son sees his own value weighed against everything else his father holds more beautiful. [...] more

Jennifer De Leon's "Home Movie" is the Boston Book Festival's 2015 selection for the One City One Story project. "Home Movie" follows Eduardo and his wife Linda on the day he records their life in America for their family in Guatemala, while a crisis strains the bonds tying the young couple together and to their adopted country. [...] more

A young woman teaching English to her Romanian students is repaid with profound lessons of her own--in language and in the nuances of love, hope, and expectation. Interspersed with Romanian words and phrases, Lenore Myka's "Lessons in Romanian" slides its listener into a place between what is known and new, familiar and exotic. [...] more

A young woman sees lessons in survival and violence handed down on a frozen Canadian lake. Ron MacLean's "How to Club A Fish" offers a vivid portrait of one family's dynamics in the world of a cramped cabin. [...] more

A hospital fundraiser is the scene of a chance meeting in Linda Cutting's "What Matters". Ailments small and large spark a lighthearted flirtation that leads a man and a woman to connect. [...] more

We can arm ourselves against cold and snow, but how do we defend against a family member's death? Stephen Dorneman's "Cold Winter" evokes the talismanic power of all our winter equipment and hints at precisely where it can fail to protect us. [...] more

When she and her partner pack up to move, a woman discovers she has brought to her new home more than just the objects she has boxed. Stacey Resnikoff's "Things in Boxes" is a tidy contemplation of what we own, what we collect, and what we discover as we move on. [...] more

In "Gretchen Was Abducted," a woman recalls with wry humor the night she was taken in error from a slumber party. Gilmore Tamny's short story offers a dispassionate exploration of haplessness and desperation, adventure and survival. [...] more

A child's complicated response to complicated power--her own and that of her parents--underlies the critical moment Tracy Hahn-Burkett narrates in her short story "Cover Story". Hahn-Burkett's fiction is a terse investigation of the violence in self-assertion. [...] more

Jennifer Haigh's "Sublimation" is the Boston Book Festival's choice for this year's One City One Story, a project to promote reading and to create community around a shared reading experience. "Sublimation" first appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of Ploughshares . Jennifer Haigh will appear at the Boston Book Festival on October 25 to discuss the story. To download the audio recording of "Sublimation," right-click on the download button beside the play button, and save the mp3 to your computer. [...] more

In Stephen Dorneman's "Country-Line Dancing in Bridgeport, CT," a aloof widower finds himself in bemused participation during an evening's unexpected dance. [...] more

In "A Thousand Cuts," Calvin Hennick turns a young boy's haircut into a taut revelation about the chaos of his mother's life, hinting at the history of this small family and intimating its perhaps ominous future. [...] more

The careful parsing of a phone message leads to a blossoming but perplexing romance. Caitlyn Kinsella's "It's Me" finds humor and poignancy in the intricacies of interaction. [...] more

A boy's silence, a sister's bicycle and a "misaligned world with skewed meanings". Gregory Spatz' "Brace" immerses us in the consciousness of a narrator thinking about ruin and loss as he remembers a childhood aphasia, a freewheeling car, and the urge to make a physical mark on and within the world. When you listen to the whole story, you'll understand the title. [...] more

For a hundred dollars, a young woman jumps into the Rio Grande, a river so filthy, it's dyed blue for the tourists. Money, risk, and self-invention intersect in Joy Castro's "A Notion I Took" as the story's narrator thinks about what is at stake for her as she leaps and descends through the water. [...] more

Physics, hope, and speculation come together beautifully in this moving story about a couple dealing with the chance that their fetus has a rare genetic mutation. In "Chance," Peter Ho Davies raises complex questions about what is certain and what is random, and about how and if our efforts affect the course of our lives. [...] more

Two people meet at a half-way point between their homes and lives. But the encounter in Roxane Gay's "Do You Have a Place For Me" is no simple escape, but a shared confrontation--of the self, the body, and the heart. Gay's prose is both analytical--is this cheating? --and intensely figurative in this short and powerful story. [...] more

Maria Mutch offers a new take on the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood, setting this old story of violence, innocence, and sexuality in a strangely natural urban world. In "Appetites", Grandmother lives in an institution, and the wolves wear turtlenecks, and Red takes matters into her own hands. [...] more

These are not the fairy tales our mothers told us. The four episodes of Matt Bell's "The Games They Played" focus on Younger and Older, siblings whose rivalries offer an education in hidden and not-so-hidden violence. Bell experiments with the cadence and the content of fairy tales, making them at once new and ancient. [...] more

A house haunted by a mother's yearning for excitement is the setting for Andrea Robertson's "The Greenbriar Ghost". Named for a woman whose ghost does haunt the narrator's Southern town, Zona tries to find her own place in a world of signs and warnings, messages from beyond, and the sometimes more troubling messages from within her own family. [...] more

Jesus is the name of Rudy's dog--Rudy being the boy who forms a frank but subtle friendship with the narrator of Erica Shubin's story "When Jesus Died". Shubin's is a rich and detailed narrative encompassing adolescent sexuality, religion, and community, and centering on the poignant makeshift burial of a pet. Most of all, though, "When Jesus Died" explores the question of what makes us feel invincible or whole and what we do to guard against diminution. [...] more

The threat of violence hangs in the air as a young boy waits in a hotel room for his bookie father to return from a fight in Ben Warner's "Sandcastles". Guarded by an ally, the boy, Snake, is full of questions about what can truly protect him. Guns, knives, or fists? Or possibly, the men entrusted with his care. [...] more

A red spaghetti-strap dress and blue-suede Doc Martens set Dinah apart as she walks through a small southern town looking for a wedding dress. But it's not just the clothing that doesn't fit; it's the music, too, that isn't quite the right accompaniment she wants for her life. Dinah lives on the flip side, the back side of "Blue Suede Shoes" in this story by Darlin' Neal about a woman teetering between maturity and childishness, weakness and independence. [...] more

“Another thing of Zinfandel. We’re headed for the Coast," says the narrator of Jonathan Gotsick's "Wing Woman" when she agrees to go along with her recently-divorced friend to assume the story's title role. Toni escorts Shelley on a journey of escape and adventure rendered with vivid and particular--and humorous--detail. Gotsick's narrative leads the two women to an aging rock band and to a final performance whose bombast reveals the story's poignant heart. [...] more

Jennifer Haigh reads "Favorite Son" from her recent collection News From Heaven . It's here that the collection's title appears--in a story of hopes and disappointments shared by an entire town and by the sons and daughters left with the town's poignant legacy. "Favorite Son" explores the ways in which a certain kind of faith and trust can turn into betrayal. [...] more

It's after a cataclysm of some sorts, a post-apocalyptic moment etched in miniature in Jody Azzouni's "The Ghostzoo". As a father and his daughter eke out an existence from the meager remnants of their former world, the little girl plays with a dollhouse. She learns as she plays about the world that is lost to her, until new arrivals start a new and perplexing cycle of creation and disappearance. [...] more

A lost purse sets in motion this fast-paced, voice-rich story of opportunism and desperation seen through the wary eyes of a little girl. Dragged around the bars and backstreets of Lowell, Massachusetts by her father's girlfriend, Kaylene watches over her sister Cleopatra and the girlfriend's son as they go in search of the purse and its promise of a better life. Tracy Winn's "Another Way to Make Cleopatra Cry" offers a vivid sense of what it means when observation is your only resource. [...] more

The complexities of a date take on new dimension in Jennifer Hill Ozga's "The Rock". Ozga's story mines the rituals of contemporary dating for their vulnerabilities and power dynamics, setting her unnamed couple on a path of gentle but inexorable devolution. "The Rock" is a story about disappointment, rendered with a light touch through painfully comic details. [...] more

The tuning of a piano becomes the catalyst for a relationship between two unlikely individuals. Christ Craig's "The Wurlitzer" makes subtle use of its narrative voice to bring two lonely people together in a bond created through music and memory. [...] more

In the hung-over aftermath of New Year's Eve, the narrator of Kate Wisel's "Ways to Break Me" finds herself exactly where she always is: in an apartment and in a relationship that is at once playground and cage. There are three people in these confined spaces, pushing and shoving at each other to assert themselves and get what they want. Wisel's story is striking for its physicality and its rendering of the drama of the body. [...] more

It's an old story: the love triangle. But Steven LaFond sets it in the world of kink. What are the most shocking parts of us that we need or desire to keep secret? What happens when circumstances risk revealing what we want to preserve for ourselves--or what we fear to acknowledge? Those are the questions the characters of "The Parts of You We Want to Keep"--and listeners to the story--are forced to ask themselves. [...] more

Existential angst takes a darkly humorous turn in Ryan Britt's short story about a man and a monster on a beach. "Sea Monster Blues" offers a variation on the Jekyll and Hyde tale, the drama compressed to one summer afternoon amid the sunscreen and the paperbacks. [...] more

A little girl plays in the woods, content to be alone with the bits and pieces of nature that she gathers around her. When she sees signs of a visitor, she welcomes this potential friend, eager to include someone else in her small world. Heather Newton's story "Things Summoned" lets us into that world and into the wonder, vulnerability, and danger of what's new and strange. [...] more

The Quincy, Massachusetts quarries are the setting for this short story about the disappearance of a young boy in 1980. Kim Savage's "Stud" weaves together the memories of two women once in thrall to the charismatic Danny Delano, piecing together a narrative of threatened innocence. The conflict between two brothers, undercurrents of homophobia, and the toxicity--literal and figurative--of the quarry landscape propel this unsettling and powerful narrative forward. [...] more

Halloween provides a touching backdrop for Erik Doughty's flash fiction piece about the emotional aftermath in a family dealing with loss. "Going as a Ghost" offers a bittersweet look at how we "go as" those who are gone. Doughty's piece is a featured selection from The Drum's Flash Fiction Open Mic held at last month's Boston Book Festival. [...] more

A chair held aloft at a Jewish wedding is the perch from which the narrator of Leah Berkowitz' "Before the Fall" observes a key moment in her life in poignant and vivid detail. The mundane, the good, and the worrisome are all before her--in what measure, she doesn't yet know. "Before the Fall" is a featured selection from The Drum's Flash Fiction Open Mic held at last month's Boston Book Festival. [...] more

Adam Renn Olenn's "Twelve" is paced by the chime of the town bells in this western-ish tale of a man looking for a way to stay out of trouble. Trouble, though, has a way of breaking out around him. "Twelve" is a featured selection from The Drum's Flash Fiction Open Mic held at this year's Boston Book Festival. [...] more

How to fix what's broken--in a person, a relationship, a home? Stephen Dorneman's flash fiction "Vodka and Duct Tape" offers moving and heart-breaking answers to these questions. "Vodka and Duct Tape" is a featured selection from The Drum's Flash Fiction Open Mic held at last month's Boston Book Festival. [...] more

Afolabi Opanubi's short story "Force," an overnight visit from an old friend brings into stark clarity the concerns of two young ex-pat Nigerians in Canada. The question of whether or not to return to Nigeria--and the question of what obligations Tinukeh and Bankole have to each other--propel this story in which personal decisions carry political and social resonance. [...] more

Books, Actually is The Drum's collection of interlaced stories set in and around the Boston Book Festival. A thief, a teenaged poet, a coxswain, and a disgruntled author are just a few of the characters created by Boston authors Catherine Elcik, Ethan Gilsdorf, Katrina Grigg-Saito, Ted Weesner, Becky Tuch, Clarence Lai, Stace Budzko, and Henriette Lazaridis Power. Hear them all, or go directly to a selected story. Elcik (00:31), Gilsdorf (6:20), Lai (11:47), Power (17:12), Weesner (22:51), Tuch (29:23), Budzko (35:39), Grigg-Saito (37:17), Elcik (42:21). [...] more

In a summer rental shared by two families, a boy and a girl in Nick Dybek's "Three Summers" search for treasure in the secret corners of the house. Parents search for a different kind of treasure--a shared history whose adventure and romance now eludes them. Over the course of three summers, both adults and children wrestle with the pull of the past and the allure of the imagined. "Three Summers" appears in print in the Fall 2013 issue of Ploughshares, and in text on Ploughshares online. The story is read aloud for The Drum by [...] more

Ethan Aronson was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. He recorded his story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. The story is one of The Drum's four featured pieces from the 2013 YAWP collection. [...] more

Emma Trujillo was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. She recorded her story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Tara Rahman was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. She recorded her story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Caroline Brink was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. She recorded her story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Sabrina Priestley was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. She recorded her story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Amariah Condon was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. She recorded her story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Noah Riley was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. He recorded his story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Quddos Rodrigues was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. He recorded his story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Gaelle Rigaud was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. She recorded her story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Arthur Galstian was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. He recorded his story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Emma LeBlanc Perez was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. She recorded her story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Ashley Lee was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. She recorded her story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

Marquis Knight-Jacks was a 2013 Summer Fellow at Grub Street's 2013 Young Adult Writers Program. He recorded his story at the conclusion of the 2013 program. [...] more

In Alix Ohlin's "Taking," the memory game played by two sisters in childhood finds heartbreaking resonance in the events of their lives. "Taking" explores the often painful connections between memory and loss, possession and disappearance, in prose of melancholic power. [...] more

Laurie Jacobs' flash fiction piece "The Call" is a MuseFlash selection from The Drum's Third Annual MuseFlash contest, recorded at Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace conference earlier this month. "The Call" is an early morning phone call that alters the life of Jacobs' college-student narrator. The brevity of the piece belies its dense emotional impact and its moving tone. [...] more

Wendy Wakeman's "Identity Theft" was a selection from The Drum's Third Annual MuseFlash contest at Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace conference earlier this month. Financial dire straits and the pressures of college and work form the setting for the piece, in which a ten dollar bill and a grandmother's handwriting come together to alter the narrator's life. [...] more

In Marcia Douglas' "Boy With a Watergun in His Schoolbag", a boy finds power and poetry in something so basic as the multiplication tables. The number seven becomes the source of discovery of his own greatness and of his identity in the face of the confining world of school and a teacher with a ruler in her hand. "Boy With a Watergun in His Schoolbag" was The Drum's selection from our Third Annual MuseFlash contest, recorded at Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace conference earlier this month. [...] more

Kelly Robertson's "The Characteristics of Dirt" is one of The Drum's selections from our Third Annual MuseFlash contest, recorded at Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace conference earlier this month. Robertson's piece takes an intriguing and almost eerie look at a woman with an intense need to dig. This short work brings the listener in close, focusing on vivid sensory details of the loam the character sifts through. [...] more

A man and a woman, a car, and a long drive in the company of memories and ruminations. Religion, race, and the seductive power of persuasion all come together in Tiphanie Yanique's story "Oakland Gomorrah". The story's conclusion offers a particularly thought-provoking reflection on beliefs and history. "Oakland Gomorrah" appears in print in the current issue of the literary journal AGNI. Listen to the story here, and read along in print . The story is read aloud by Katrina Grigg-Saito. [...] more

Ed Bull's "Seed" revisits the shocking events of August 1, 1966 when Charles Whitman shot seventeen people from the University of Texas clock tower. Part essay, part invention, Bull's piece bring us into the events, allowing us to ponder Whitman himself and the nature of his horrible crime and the nature of violence. [...] more

Judith McCormack's "Creation Stories" appears in the current issue (Issue Number 43) of the Harvard Review . "Creation Stories" is the tale of a relationship and the law--social laws, laws of attraction, and the laws that govern the creation of facts and identity. In McCormack's narrative, Elisabetta and Miles meet en route to a legal conference in Sicily, and proceed to build a connection founded as much on omission as communication. The story is read aloud by Katrina Grigg-Saito . [...] more

Joshua Malbin creates an avian drama for his short story "The Mating Behavior of Great Tits". It's a new genre, possibly with this story as its only example. Malbin's unusual story sets a drama of relationships and family in the world of birds, immersing the listener in one bird's struggle to establish a family and a place in his world. [...] more

Steve Adams's "The Fish" opens as a woman realizes her husband has killed his entire herd of cattle. This brief and powerful story goes on to sketch an entire marriage strained by the hard life of the land. It offers a poignant look at loss as well as the tenuous promise of a new beginning. "The Fish" was originally published in Glimmer Train . [...] more

Lisa Duffy's "What Matters" explores our notions of exactly that in the telling and remembering of the events surrounding the brief disappearance of the narrator's son. When the little boy gets lost in Central Park, his absence sets off a chain of events both in the search for him and in the narrator's search for the meaning of the events as she relives them. Trust, fidelity, and truth are just some of the ideas Duffy mines for this compelling and compellingly told story. [...] more

Robert Alaine Couture's "Moment of Forgiveness" turns a Williamsburg, Massachusetts orchard into the setting for a fraught moment between lovers old and new. In just three minutes, Couture evokes the complications of long relationships and offers an intriguing twist on the idea of the snake in the garden. "Moment of Forgiveness" is our selection for the February 2013 round of Zip-Code Stories. [...] more

A violent flood provides the backdrop for the tentative relationship developing in Jackson Culpepper's "The Last Thing To Go. " As the storm waters surge, a young man searching for stability--and for connection with the young woman he meets at church--confronts new questions about himself and about the nature of love and salvation. [...] more

The narrator of Leeyee Lim's "Hereditary" is a young girl troubled by her mother's illness and her sister's loss. Sharing a sandwich with a homeless man, she thinks of her family, and the strange ways in which people nourish each other. [...] more

Colleen Fullin's "The Dead and The Drowned" focuses in on a teenaged boy in the aftermath of the drownings of young men in his city. Garrison is shaken by their deaths, but unsettled more profoundly in ways that he only comes to understand--if at all--at the story's end. The reader is in for a powerful conclusion to Fullin's tale, as it touches on the complications of identity, desire, and sexuality. [...] more

"You Get What You Get" offers an intense story of a woman confronted with her husband's deteriorating mental health.  A trip to the remote suburbs to see a house her husband has purchased brings Jennifer face to face with the dangers in her own home. At the heart of Lisa Mecham's story are detailed character studies of people in crisis. [...] more

In Sandra Jensen's "War", a young South African girl wrestles with her emerging sexuality and with the political, familial, and cultural conflicts taking place around her. Learning about the Boer War in school, Kimberly thinks instead of the more immediate aggression in her mother's relationship with her boyfriend. Attraction and repulsion, love and violence, mingle in this rich story. [...] more

Over the course of a slightly chaotic supper, Kay, the protagonist of Vicky Grut's short story "Debts" confronts her social, financial, and emotional obligations. The story is populated by vivid characters--a strange boy who keeps washing Kay's husband's car, Kay's unruly daughter, surprise guests with complicated histories--all of whom come together in a sometimes clashing interaction. Grut brings the story's various elements together in a thoughtful and moving conclusion. [...] more

Lisa Korzeniowski's "The Summer of Nathan Nicky" watches two young sisters watching a boy--a shirtless boy mowing a lawn next door. As the narrator ogles the boy, she engages in a curious seduction, displaying herself as desirable. This brief story paints a vivid picture of adolescent sexuality and the sensuality of the gaze. [...] more

"The Lobster Mafia Story," by Anna Solomon, is the Boston Book Festival 's choice for this year's One City One Story, a project to promote reading and to create community around a shared reading experience. It's a poignant tale set in motion by a widow's dreadful secret about a long-ago murder. The story is read aloud by The Drum 's editor, Henriette Lazaridis Power. Anna Solomon will appear at the Boston Book Festival on October 27 to discuss the story. To download the audio recording of "The Lobster Mafia [...] more

Mary Medlin's short story "Not Now But Soon" follows Connor as he crosses Somerville to pay the rent on his girlfriend's apartment. But Afshan is dead, and the tragic event that caused her death haunts Connor, rendering his rent-payments a tangible form of inadequate expiation. The story is shot through with themes of atonement and guilt as it offers an in-depth portrait of a young man and woman as they fall in love. [...] more

Sabina Murray's "Balboa" imagines the explorer in 1513 as he climbs a ridge on the Isthmus of Panama and sees the Pacific Ocean. "Balboa," Murray writes from the explorer's point of view, "is that divining line between the modern and the primitive. " In this story, from her collection Tales of the New World , Murray investigates the meaning of civilization, discovery, and the foreign, and makes us consider the intersection of power and desire. [...] more

"The world will end soon. " So says the protagonist of Jen Bergmark's "Turn of the Century. " An old rock and roller who views himself as a has-been, the singer is fascinated by Nostradamus and by predictions that the millennium will send us all into chaos. He looks ahead to New Year's of 2000 as the confirmation of the ending he has experienced in his career and his life. But when a young concert promoter recognizes him at an LA flea market, his life, like the century, takes a different turn. [...] more

A farewell gathering held by the Calcutta Heritage Society of Northern California is the starting point for Bharati Mukherjee's story "The Going-Back Party". Shefali Sinha watches as the actions of the guests reveal the envy, nostalgia, and uncertainty that direct their interactions. The story goes on to offer a wry and insightful meditation on distance and closeness, and on the ways in which our emotions can surprise us. [...] more

A broken marriage and a change of scenery find the protagonist of Jean Ryan's "Migration" examining her past and planning a future in northern California. A flock of geese by her house, and one particular goose who refuses to leave, lead Erica to consider old bonds and new loyalties as she charts a new life. [...] more

In Colette Sartor's "Daredevil," a little girl becomes the catalyst for unsettling and then tragic events in the lives of a young mother, Grace, and her son Aidan. The story explores issues of faith, risk-taking, and the limits of sympathy, and looks at the many ways in which a home can be threatened. [...] more

Daniel Davis brings a modern sensibility to the cowboys-and-Indians tale in "West Texas Tears". In his short story, two lawmen come upon a land-grabbers' home where Indians have left only one little girl alive. The narrator, Horace, wrestles with what's fair and what's just as he comes upon a surviving Indian caught in barbed wire. Davis' story is a subtle study of the complications of justice and belonging. [...] more

Jyotsna Sreenivasan's "Home" explores exactly the nature of that concept for young Amiya as she returns to 1970s Ohio after several years of childhood in her native India. She is in the position of being both immigrant and emigrant at the same time. As Amiya navigates her return to American culture and second grade, Sreenivasan sheds new insight on what it means to belong and to be different. [...] more

Angela Foster's "Shards of Glass" finds a brother and sister fighting their step-father with whatever tools they have--a knife, a gun, anger, and rejection. But books, escape, and the imagination turn out to be just as powerful as these young people stand up to the bully who runs their house. [...] more

Eric Weinberger's "Once More With Feeling" is a story of fidelity and infidelity set in the world of guided tourism. The story's protagonist Adam steers his tour groups around locales emblematic of diplomacy and international negotiation as he encounters one couple who seem to manage a diplomatic menage of their own. The narrative follows him as he studies these two and contemplates a crisis in his own relationship. [...] more

"Placenta" completes the trio of flash fiction pieces from Irish writer James Claffey for The Drum . Here, a son watches as his parents react to a miscarriage. Themes of pain and nourishment run through this narrative which concludes with a strange communion between mother and child. To hear the other two flash fiction pieces by James Claffey, click here . [...] more

A teenaged girl narrates John Haggerty's "The Other Half of Graceland," describing a trip to the eponymous home of Elvis along with her mother, who is looking for what the magazines call more pizzazz in her life. Armed with a make-up kit, an expertise for matching blush to skin tone, and a keen eye for adult behavior, Lisa steers them through their pilgrimage and tries to mediate the relationship between a young man they meet there and his father. As Lisa manages her mother's own delicate emotions, Graceland becomes the setting for the revelation [...] more

The burning of an opera house, a rivalry between two sisters, self-creation in Venice--these are all elements of Annemarie Neary's short story "Firebird". Its narrative threads woven together like those of an opera, Neary's story mines the relationship between Elvira and Betsy (or Betzi, as she renames herself) and their ongoing attempts to define themselves against and with each other. The story is a meditation on identity and art, originality and imitation. [...] more

James O'Brien's "Penned Up" tells a soldier's story. In a laconic tone that still hints at the pain of his experience, the narrator describes the heat, the smells, and the tragedy of his tour in Iraq. "Penned Up" is about detachment and loyalty, isolation and belonging, and expectations met and withheld. [...] more

The narrator of Vanessa Blakeslee's "Welcome, Lost Dogs" offers a combination of mercy and practicality, sentiment and realism, as she tries to recover her dogs, stolen from her Costa Rican ranch. An expat American, riding the borders between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, she encounters--and is part of--a world in which everything and everyone has a value to be assessed and calculated. She tries to find her way among old relationships and new communities, thinking about what she hast lost and what she might restore. [...] more

James Claffey returns to The Drum with the second of three short pieces. This one, "A Hoor of a Day," finds the narrator confronting his Da in his coffin. Even from his box, the man has the power to intrude on his son's thoughts and his memories, the father's phrases and aphorisms serving as an unsettling coda to his life. [...] more

James Claffey's "A Clip on the Ear" blends a Catholic litany with the rituals of a boy's Sundays at home in Ireland. It's a home presided over by a violent father who, when not away on the North Sea oil rigs, maintains strict control--over his wife, his children, the household rituals, and the litany itself. The boy seeks refuge in the hiding places of his home and in his fantasies of revenge. [...] more

Colette Sartor's "Dress Shoes" recounts a relationship tested by one friend's transition from male to female. From Elke's perspective, we feel her longing and her sense of loss as her friend Ralph drifts away from her, forming a new bond. "Dress Shoes" is about sexuality--Elke's and Ralph's--but it is also about control, identity, and about the various ways in which we try to make our marks, literal and figurative, on ourselves and on others. [...] more

Jessica Barksdale's "Marco on the Beach" captures Marco trying to make do--with food stamps, with his girlfriend who can't sleep enough, with uncertainty over where to live. As he and Sara negotiate the grocery-store aisles and settle down over a meager meal, a new discovery makes Marco imagine his life, an alternate future spinning out from a single choice. [...] more

Cheryl Walsh's "Unequal Temperaments" is narrated by a musician and a tuner of harpsichords--instruments whose tuning challenges give the story its title. Telling a story about friction among players in a conservatory, the piece explores our ability to adjust, align, and predict events in our experience, and suggests that despite our certainty that we can foretell things, we will always be surprised and perhaps foiled by the irrational and the unruly. [...] more

Hadley Moore's "When My Father Was In Prison" describes the power of language in the life of a nine-year-old boy as he tries to sort out what it means to be a boy, a man, a father. A father in prison, a pet bird that has died, an older brother discovering his sexuality--Moore's narrator studies it all, coming to understand some part of how he fits in to his world. [...] more

Barry Jay Kaplan takes on the world of publishing in his short story "Marco Sells His Book. " A group of friends is shaken by news that an underserving member of their Thursday night salon has reached what they view as premature success. The launch party for Marco's novel is shot through with jealousy and social strategizing, but comes to an encouraging conclusion. [...] more

The teenaged narrator of Erin Kelly's "Shhh" has decided to stop talking. It's an eloquent protest, conveying independence and resistance to her mother, affection for her younger brother, and a nuanced sensitivity to the world around her. While her brother builds tiny walls to protect the backyard ants, the narrator builds a connection that requires almost no words. [...] more

Caralyn Davis' short story "Wallow" is the Winner of The 2011 Drum/Side B Magazine Dual Publication Award . "Wallow" depicts an evening in the life of a sin-eater, a woman with the ability to consume and absorb the sins of the dead. Following the traditions of the ancient Egyptians, Davis' contemporary sin-eater dresses in style, makes keen social observations about her customers and clients, and contemplates the balance of good and evil. [...] more

James McGirk's short story "The Tramp Steamer" presents a side of Richard M. Nixon we've never seen before. McGirk imagines the young lawyer and his new bride traveling on a tramp steamer of the United Fruit Company to celebrate their first anniversary. Seasick, angry, jealous, Nixon reveals his inelegance to his wife who yearns for more glamour and glitz. McGirk takes the facts of the Nixons' actual 1941 trip and spins out an incisive and compelling story of bitterness and dreams. [...] more

Hau Nguyen's story "Immigrants" is a young man's advice to himself on how to navigate a new life in a new world. Part reminder, part exhortation, part warning, "Immigrants" conveys the newcomer's desires for assimilation and independence, and his embrace of the new while holding onto the old. "Immigrants" appears in The Drum as part of our selection from Grub Street's Young Adult Writers' Program . [...] more

In Molly Zimetbaum's "Balloons," an older sister tells the poignant story of the birthday celebration for her little sister that seemingly goes awry. This family of three--two daughters and a weary but caring father--finds a sweet balm for disappointment. "Balloons" appears in The Drum as part of our selection from Grub Street's Young Adult Writers' Program . [...] more

Carla Panciera's "All of A Sudden" paints an insightful portrait of a unusual young girl in a small New England town. Albina is odd enough to be exotic, strange enough to be awkward, and a source of mingled concern and attraction for the the narrator who befriends her during their childhood and adolescence. Watching Albina, trying at times to correct her and perhaps save her, the narrator reflects on her own changing sense of self. "All of A Sudden" originally appeared in print in the New England Review . [...] more

Michelle Seaton's "Low Tide" takes a tide pool as the starting point for its study of independence and growth. A child's discovery becomes the source for a mother's discovery too, as parent and child explore the water's edge. [...] more

Gina Ochsner's "Sleeping Beauty" is a retelling of the old story, set in Yakusha, one of the coldest parts of Russia. In this version, the beauty of the title is a young girl working in a Russian market, seemingly trapped inside her kiosk until a suitor with an unlikely errand frees her. Ochsner's prose mingles the lush details and fantastic elements of folk tales with the realities of the contemporary world. [...] more

In Nina Badzin's short story "David," a post-delivery hospital room is the setting for a skirmish between husband and wife as they debate their new son's name. The decision is rife with social, cultural, and religious implications, seeming to set husband and wife apart even as it brings mother and child together. [...] more

Rural Greece is the backdrop for Sandra Jensen's "Square Root," a story propelled by the complex relationships between a mother and her children, the mother and the men she captivates, and a group of village Greeks and the foreign family living among them. Told from the point of view of the little girl, "Square Root" turns a trip to buy a pet goat into a study of social and sexual power. [...] more

In Drew Balfour Jameson's short story "Drown," a fishing trip--and the gutting, cleaning, and cooking of the day's catch--provides the setting for a wary encounter between a teenaged boy and the new man in his mother's life. "Drown" renders the details of fish-handling with vivid detail, and allows the relationship between the boy and the man to emerge with subtelty, though just as clearly. [...] more

Bruce Holland Rogers' short story "Snow and Lemons" follows Tibor as he tries to lend purpose to his retirement. His two goals--to bring pride to Hungary's younger generation, and to make his neighbor smile--prove to be more challenging than even he might have expected. A Budapest snowstorm is the backdrop for this story about an older man's persistence and his inspired adaptation to the routines of his life. [...] more

The narrator of Kevin Brown's "One Life" returns to Hong Kong after his wife's death from SARS with the sole mission to contract the disease himeslf so that he can be reunited with her. We follow the narrator through the city as he reflects on his marriage, and ponders the strange situation of trying to stay alive so that he can court a particular kind of death. "One Life" is read aloud by Actors' Shakespeare Project actor Bill Barclay . [...] more

The narrator of Steven Lee Beeber's short story "Blood-Red Nails, Pale Cold Hands" contemplates the strange combinations of violence and tenderness that underlie his relationships with the important women in his life. The story begins with an accident witnessed in childhood and concludes with the scratches left from passion. [...] more

Sarah Nager's "Horseshoe Hunt" brings a weary young woman and an enthusiastic little boy together on a beach where their attitudes and world views collide over a horseshoe crab. [...] more

Veronique Hyland's short story "Orchard", inspired by the Wineville Chicken Coop murders in 1920s California, is an evocative study of complicity, guilt, and the cost of a young boy's confused loyalty. [...] more

Bret Anthony Johnston spins a story about loss of innocence, loyalty, and betrayal from a simple prompt: one sentence from an author's correspondence. Bret's sentence? "Sex doesn't start on an eighteenth birthday at midnight. " [...] more

Ann King's "Plumbing Problems" sets a cancer diagnosis in the world of a plumbing supply company, where the bright white of a porcelain tub, and the cramped space of a backroom toilet give us a fresh look on an all too common event. [...] more

Shubha Sunder's "Climb" layers relationships between cousins, between mothers and daughters, and between brothers and sisters with the tug between two cultures. In Sunder's story, a voyage with Trupti's relatives visiting from America turns out to reveal the stresses within the older girl's seemingly perfect life. [...] more

Award-winning novelist Jennifer Haigh's "Claire of the Moon" tells the story of a little girl who can't tolerate the sun and the adults who try to shield her or to let her bask in its reflection. [...] more

Sandra Jensen's "The Good Wife," set in the South Africa of the 1950s, explores difficulties facing a politically motivated woman who has given up her anti-apartheid activities to look after her husband and young son. [...] more

A. Igoni Barrett's "My Smelling Mouth Problem" brings together a Nigerian traffic jam, popular music, and a bad case of halitosis to tell a lively story about personal and cultural independence. [...] more

As a young girl faces the break-up of her home town, she confronts a larger tragedy in her own family. The competing forces of dissolution and re-collection meet in journalist and fiction writer Leslie Schultz's short story "Drowning". [...] more

Pennsylvania writer Jamye Shelleby's short story "Twenty Five" contemplates the metaphysics of loss through a brother-sister relationship remembered through markers in time. [...] more

In Newbury College professor Aaron Tillman's "Heeding Doctor Eisner," an over-analyzing academic comes undone as he clings to sociological theory and to questionable sources of advice in the figures of his boss, his student, and his fellow commuters. [...] more

Allison Williams’ “Snake” finds two children playing in a muddy yard. Their game turns to a scuffle made dangerous when their father returns, sure to be angry at the mess they’ve made. Williams’ brief piece offers an intense study of the blurred line between protection and harm. [...] more

Three narrators take the listener through a range of responses to American culture. A Bolivian tour guide, a Taiwanese businesswoman, and a young Palestinian give us three perspectives on America’s relations with the world, all of them with a hamburger at the core of the story. [...] more

The female narrator of Pete Smith’s “Testimony” tells the story of an affair that starts with a cloud of drinks and ends in the mystery of not knowing a partner. Smith explores the ways in which a self can become lost between a past and a present, youth and maturity--and intoxicating drinks and an even more intoxicating partner. [...] more

While her parents are attending her baby cousin’s circumcision ceremony, the teenage narrator of Jonathan Papernick’s “Skin for Skin” invites an intriguing new boy from school over to her home. The narrator is not Jewish, as her parents are, but her views on religion and family begin to change as she contemplates sleeping with the boy, demanding of him an intriguing bargain. [...] more

A Halloween dinner with her estranged father and his new wife exposes tensions and fault lines in Claudia’s world. A single mother with a young son, she tries to preserve the spirit of trick or treat against her father’s wishes, until finally the stressful meal veers towards a new and alarming direction. [...] more

The narrator of Lauren Grodstein’s “This Truth I’m Telling” was a bartender in the World Trade Center. At a jobs convention for workers displaced after 9/11, Martin thinks about the life and the people that he has lost. He wonders which is truer: the optimistic exhortations of the jobs speaker, or the resignation he feels. [...] more

The narrator in Lynne Barrett’s story “Macy is the Other Woman,” is the other woman, conducting an affair with a softball teammate whose girlfriend she doesn’t want to hurt. Over a warm July 4^th weekend in Washington, Macy comes to terms with the affair, pondering the complicated entanglements of infidelity and friendship. [...] more

In Ben Percy’s “The Neighborhood,” economic stress leads suburbanites to rather sinister acts against one family unable to keep up appearances. The Petersens become the focus of neighborhood concern, and their house becomes the target of a destructive communal activity. [...] more

At the turn of the 19^th century, Albert wakes to find himself penniless and paperless, with no memory of his travels and the time he has been walking. In this excerpt from her unpublished novel, Fugueur, Maud Casey writes about a man caught in a fugue state, lost in time and place as he walks through France from town to town. [...] more

The narrator in Laura Salamy’s story, “Signs of Life,” contemplates her relationship with her significant other, Charlie, while vacationing in Jamaica. While eating local cuisine, relaxing in the hotel, and taking walks on the beach, the narrator contemplates the changes in her relationship, including one change she is not sure she can forgive or forget. [...] more

Aimee Loiselle’s“3 Women Wishing for a Boy” follows three generations of young women hoping to win their mother’s love while they respond to pregnancy, love, and sometimes both at once. [...] more

In “Caiman,” Bret Anthony Johnston’s narrator details a parent’s fear over a young girl’s abduction from a Texas town. Johnston story examines the nature of evil, and explores the limits of our ability to protect against it. [...] more

Elinor Teele’s “Covenant” offers a modern retelling of the story of Noah’s Ark. Teele’s Noah packs his family’s pets, his wife, and their three grown children into a dingy scallop boat, along with a few beers. [...] more

EB Moore’s “Kennebec” finds its protagonist struggling to come to terms with the drowning of his young stepson. As Carl mourns by the river that has taken the boy’s body, he wrestles with his guilt and with his first attempts to regain a normal life. [...] more