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

STORY OF THE WEEK

Meeting at the Gate

By Ben Weise

His wife had called everybody except the governor. He had a hard time explaining himself because he felt she wouldn’t understand.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Don’t Say War

By Olga Mexina

I remember his face—like someone vomited a tanker of graveyard flowers. Lovelier than anything Hemingway birthed at La Closerie on Montparnasse.

WINTER STORY CONTEST

Our Winter Contest is open to all fiction and nonfiction writers. We’re looking for short shorts, short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, all forms of literary nonfiction, and excerpts from longer works. See the Guidelines.

FROM THE LIBRARY

Mimesis

By Fady Joudah

If you tear down the web it will simply know this isn’t a place to call home. And you’d get to go biking. She said that’s how others become refugees isn’t it?

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The Lucky Bastard

By N. Jane Kalu

Only now does Grace understand that for her mum, the 1993 election held so much promise that it caused hope to spread like a disease.

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Earth in the Time of Billie Holiday

By Canisia Lubrin

Combat commanded no serious loyalty from me or Siem, though it did have a first taste, a sound.

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CARTOONS

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Roanoke Rapids

By Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

Tchaikovsky can be real sad. And sometimes Tchaikovsky can be scary. But it’s never real scary. Things always turn out in the end.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2025-01

By Various Artists

New laughs in which timing is everything, crime gets a glass half full, and sweet treats are terminated.

FICTION

Old Friends

By Tom Lakin

Wordlessly, in the way of birds suddenly ascending in unison at some invisible signal, we peeled away from our mothers and went scampering into the yard.

FICTION

Rapture Basement

By Maud Newton

My mom didn’t want me to know that she was taking testosterone. And yet, one by one as the months went by, her confidants anxiously rang me up to make sure I knew.

NARRATIVE 10

Narrative 10

By Allegra Goodman

I just knew I had a calling. As an adult it’s good for me to remember what I knew as a child. Writing is more than a profession.

NARRATIVE 10

Narrative 10

By Tom Jenks

If a story succeeds, its words carry the reader home, back to life outside the story, having received gifts along the way.