I began with a girl named Leah, age eleven. It was my first story, and the goal was simply to write one. ... to me to invent a new character. So the second story was about Leah, too. This time she was twelve ... a prize, got published, and gave me a cast of characters. I had no MFA, no idea yet how to learn from ...
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old deaf hobo, and he had taught it to me when I was eight. One of the first times we were practicing ... I wrote in my best cursive, slanted up to the right. She squinted her eyes at me. “A ghost town? Why?” ... including me. His drinking made me a little anxious. It also made me glad I was on my own with him right ...
side. I wanted to link my hand in hers, but she looked past me to the opposite wall. A picture hung ... nostrils when I smudged ash on my eyelids, but she let me dress myself for school, for church, let me aim ... certain my grandfather lurked, waiting for me to find him. Since I’d only met him once before he ...
a freshman at another school, and she was hiding in the girls’ bathroom. A few minutes later the door to the ... red across the pale skin of her palm. She was bleeding but felt nothing other than the ecstatic ... hair threatening, finishing with: “Then she pushed me into the lockers, Mr. Allegretti.” The girls left ...
shape of her backside. He liked the shape. One time she was sitting at the booth next to his and he ... down at her table while she was talking with one of her girl friends and introduced himself. She shook ... A few nights later they chanced to be standing next to each other at the bar. She was trying to elbow ...
on Eid morning, she told me that when my aunt was in college, my grandparents brought a suitor for ... her, and now she had humiliated me. Empathy made it so that underneath my anger I felt it was a fair ... you, or her? ✷ It feels something like this: I wrote my mother out of me—until she was expelled, onto ...
I was right. Finally, my cast assembled, I went to the lead actress. Sarah shot to her feet the moment ... I went to Bobby, who met me at the door of his kip, his drunken father snoring within. His face battered, ... he nodded his head as I made my proposal. "It's possible," he said. Next ...
Fall 1986
a bruise." She holds her palms in front of her face. "I was only nine and it looked more serious ... than that." She stares past her hands, past me, over my shoulder, when she says it, as though ... authority. I think I know what she sees, though. As a girl, Joan was always too tall and skinny and ...
me and even at the mall my customers said I had a glow that lit up the whole Sears. He was kind to my ... us and I borrowed three wedges of lemon from my cousin next door and he grilled the salmon on the ... left marks on my face because I'd smiled at the UPS man the way my mama had taught me about ...
Chair, William Stafford. At its conclusion, she looked down, looked up and read the title of the next ... can she be?”), Had my picture taken, Even had a poem written to me By the one I’d gone to honor The ... me. I said, “We are the same age.” She nodded. “We read the same magazines when we were kids,” I said, ...