I can’t swear that I was actually in the annual Christmas pageant at the Hungarian Reformed Church in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1982. I can conjure a hazy memory of my childhood self on stage, wearing a homemade shepherd’s costume and doing my best to look sore afraid, but who’s to say that I’m not …
Hors d’oeuvres They both brought bacon-turkey wraps, but his was heightened with baseball mustard while she had horseradish dijon instead. Their yogurt was Greek, their hummus garlic-infused. Both had celery and carrot sticks, but he ignored the celery while she looked at the carrots as if they were plagued. For dessert they had green apples …
Morris had a dozen paperbacks about Zen Buddhism and a shoebox full of audio — taped lectures, guided trances, and soothing tones. But Nigel had been to Japan. Nigel wore parachute pants from the Army/Navy Surplus that flowed like an aikido skirt. Nigel said he could summon winds. The basin of the picnic ground was …
I HADN’T PLANNED TO RUN INTO HARVEY DECKER. I do sometimes, plan to run into people. I go back to my hometown planning to run into my first true love, a boy who never gave me a look. I rehearse long, desultory conversations we will have–I take both parts: his, wistful with regret and keen …
She has stars in her eyes, and I don’t mean a figurative glimmer, I mean when I looked into her eyes I saw tiny pricks of light shining forth from her dark irises and pupils. The same sweeping pattern from both eyes as if she were on the highest of mountains on the darkest of …
“Sometimes when a person admires you, you despise him and don’t care.” Read “Sucker” by Carson McCullers
Fannie Hurst’s writing career began in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post. The all-but-forgotten author was one of the highest paid writers in the United States after World War I. Of Hurst, it was said that “no other living American woman has gone so far in fiction in so short a time.” Her novels …
Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber moved in the same circles as Dorothy Parker and Noël Coward in the Algonquin Round Table. Ferber wrote Show Boat, So Big, and Giant, in addition to several other novels adapted into musicals and Oscar-winning films. Her 1913 story “The Girl Who Went Right” follows a new department store salesgirl …
American novelist and Pulitzer Prize winner Newton Booth Tarkington has been heralded as one of the best authors of the 20th century. His work explored middle America and often romanticized the life of Midwesterners. In his story “Captain Schlotterwerz” published in 1918, two German-Americans living in Cincinnati venture to Mexico to escape the tense political …
A young man was staring at the display case underneath the information desk in the lobby of the student union when Anna Harris marched in, took a seat behind the desk, and said, “You parked in my spot.” He looked up at her. “Excuse me?” She nodded toward the window and the parking lot beyond. …