Narrative Magazine | Writers, Fiction, Poetry, Storytelling, Nonfiction, Art

STORY OF THE WEEK

Loose Change

By Lara Waas

Every Sunday when her mother called, she’d ask if Mel was making memories. Who needs to make memories if they’re making money? Mel would say, and they’d both laugh.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Transcendentalism I

By Rob Shapiro

But if God resembles
anything, let it be

the larkspurs growing by the highway’s crest—

FINAL TWO WEEKS TO ENTER

Deadline: Fri., Nov. 21, at 11:59 p.m., PST.

We’re looking for short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, and excerpts from long fiction and nonfiction.

Please see the Guidelines.

NARRATIVE PRIZE WINNER

Honey Buns and Cream Soda in the Stairwell

By A. T. Steel

Gold was the color of summer, and it peaked in the morning when the light was still stark and directional. Then everyone who lived in Harlem could forget for a while that people were dying, and the city hated them.

SPRING CONTEST WINNERS

Were All Stars to Disappear

By Massoud Moussavi

She arrived at eight in the morning, removed her black chador with a graceful motion, revealing a long dress and a stylish headscarf. Then she began her work.

SPRING CONTEST WINNERS

Motherland

By Baird Harper

Though Tomo isn’t in love with his ex-girlfriend anymore, he pores over Juliet’s emails about her charity work in Ecuador, always pausing on the names of the men. Donnie, Danny, Peter, Pedro.

SPRING CONTEST WINNERS

Sorry

By R. D. Saporita

Since that first day, the girl had appeared on the beach every Saturday and Sunday a little before noon, always wearing the same outfit and always alone. But today she hadn’t shown.

FICTION

The Flowers in the Desert

By Jennifer Delgadillo

Her children walked next to her without saying a word, each holding together the parts of their collapsing world on the last night they were a family.

FICTION

Tort

By Andre Dubus III

Maybe if Jim had not been so lonely himself, she would not have returned that smile with a kiss and their clothes would not be coming off as if something larger than the two of them was pulling the fabric away from their skin.

FICTION

The Horse

By Mary Morris

He took a hammer and drove a nail into the wall of the garage at about my height. Then he tied a short rope to the nail. “That’s your horse,” he said. “You can ride him, just be sure to tie him up again.”

FICTION

Restorations

By Emily Russell

Truth commissions, cartels, the oil pipelines, it’s all happening, the world churning on, stories to report, while he sits here night after night, complicit in his own discontent.

CLASSICS

Walking Out

By David Quammen

The boy knew he was supposed to feel great shame, but he felt little. His father could no longer hurt him as he once could, because the boy was coming to understand him. His father could not help himself.

CLASSICS

American Express

By James Salter

They never knew the girl at the reception desk with her nearsightedness and wild, full hair. They knew various others, they knew Julie, they knew Catherine, they knew Ames.

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

The Trees Their Axes

By Franke Varca

just as once touching the lake now dry can’t undo the rippleslike to deny love can’t undo the feeling of it

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

Oh for Fuck’s Sake

By Dion O’Reilly

Fuck it. I’m too porous. Everything rushes in. Everything that ever drove me crazy with dumb hope, every letdown. Here it is.

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

Weddings of One

By Matthew Gellman

I cringe at the thought, but in the aftermath of love, its ruptured chronology of sun, who wouldn’t want at least its fragment?

POETRY

They Who Loved the Smell of Burning

By Robert Hedin

And by the time the sun was barely over the trees, they’d already started in, burning. They burned the crops, the vineyards, then torched the forests. They burned all that day and into the next.

POETRY

Stutter Poetica

By Talia Isaacson

O syntax of connective fiber, O blanched oak, alluviated wood, nothing is beyond texture. Wind mouths the shape of clouds as they pass.

POETRY

SIX-WORD STORIES

POETRY

Letter to Metune from Lahontan Reservoir

By Lindsay Wilson

I wanted to stop wanting. I wanted to leap from that cliff to know whose true face I’d see just before I broke the surface , so then I might know how I look to others and learn a lesson from falling.

SIX-WORD STORIES

Castaway Carnivore

By Brooks Mendell

A witty handful of words about perils of survival of the fittest.

GRAPHIC STORIES

CARTOONS

GRAPHIC STORIES

Hey EV

By Glynnis Fawkes

A humorous account of technology, memory, and love.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2025-09

By Various Artists

Great new toons by P. C. Vey, Jon Adams, David Gomberg, Suzy Becker, and Sarah Morrissette.