Authors
Poetry
Not all his children love themselves. Look at little Adrienne.
Poem of the Week
I make peas and argue with a wall. Something gets stuck like that.
Poetry
Descent jumps and jostles, nausea drops me back to the floodplain.
Features
The best writers talk a story the way they put it down on the page.
Narrative Outloud
Charlie wasn’t Lena’s first love, but he counted on being her last.
Narrative Outloud
If it were fiction, calling the place Newtown would be too much.
Story of the Week
The new generation doesn’t play war, which is a shame; they text.
Fiction
Rise the Euphrates, my first novel, grew out of a feverish dream.
Interviews
Since I was little I was always wondering, What makes people tick?
Editors' Note
We encourage our readers to submit their own memoirs and essays...
Editors' Note
We are pleased to announce the new Narrative website design.
Editors' Note
Welcome to the
new Narrative!
Celebrating our
Fifth Anniversay.
new Narrative!
Celebrating our
Fifth Anniversay.
Editors' Note
Is this the best of times or the worst of times for readers and writers?
Editors' Note
Narrative offers any reader a modern pocket library.
Narrative Outloud
Lust was just a frenzy of activity that had mostly led Benny in circles.
Interviews
I’ve wavered in confidence, but never on whether I was going to write.
Narrative Outloud
Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad wins Pulitzer Prize.
Interviews - Audio/Video
Audio clips of Pultizer Prize winner Jennifer Egan on her work.
Story of the Week
Her bra is black, her breasts full and white. There is too much flesh.
Narrative 10
Love is the difference between a full life and an empty one.
Nonfiction
We’d never had a cross word, but I’d never corrected him.
Fiction
I put my arm around Larry’s shoulders and ask him to pull over.
Fiction
She pulls quickly on her cigarette and blows it at me through the phone.
Narrative Outloud
I tell my sister what I didn’t tell my father, I love you. Please, don’t die.
Nonfiction
Walking on Canal Street, I slipped on the curb and fell on my face.
Story of the Week
It had always been this way. Mothering, for my mother, was a cameo role.
Story of the Week
What were the unsafe things to say even in a thirty-year marriage?
Story of the Week
We’re tired. In bed, we hold hands. We watch TV. But do you want more?
Nonfiction
Widow. I look up the etymology. To separate, split, cleave, divide.
Winter Contest Winners
The graffiti suggests the most essential story of New Haven.
Poetry
The exurban dream of it all, to enter is to have the ability to exit.
Poem of the Week
I roll lactic bubbles under my face with rose quartz, fuck a pillow in sleep.
Poetry
What I want is a woman who knows all the meanings of indulgence.
Story of the Week
His mother wasn’t there to meet him at his stop. She never was.
iStories
If you play, decide three things: the rules, stakes, and quitting time.
iStories
She’d planned to choose an adult film and lie back with him to watch.
iStories
Mr. Holt had grown old since Beverly last saw him. He looked weary.
iStories
He’d always wanted to kiss her thigh dimples but never dared.
Fall Contest Winners
I miss sex. I really liked it, and I was good at it, if I do say so myself.
Story of the Week
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.
Poem of the Week
It wants to name the dead—without a name you wander lost in the sky.
Poetry Contest Winners
i was a wild thing down by the river, quiet like wild things are.
Story of the Week
There was no sense in brushing off or any other civilized thing.
iStories
This is what he must have felt when she told him about her affair.
iStories
She holds the shirt to her face and inhales. With a start she pulls away.
Spring Contest Winners
She alone knew how he could be swept up, tender interior laid bare.
Poem of the Week
The waves have heard of you. How you caress, how you kiss.
Story of the Week
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.
Poem of the Week
Show me your darkness, your nothing-to-see and everything to touch.
Narrative 10
I like to think of love as something that one should keep feeding, like a fire.
Poem of the Week
Salve, salve, Regina. As the song ends, he folds into the fabric seat.
Poetry
I think of the mortal patience that made the constellations long ago.
Poem of the Week
I am weary of the summer’s darkness in this cavern of elms.
I wish the leaves would fall, that one wind would blow them away.
iStories
We pushed through the doors, back into the audition, among the lithe adults.
Poetry
For today, fuck it, it’s snowing, stay in. Eat your Wheaties dry.
Poem of the Week
Some night soon you’ll haul yourself out from far beneath this life.
Poem of the Week
A wildness and all the ways I could never be classy enough for pearls.
Poem of the Week
I’m mourning in the armpits of a lover we once called a family friend.
Poem of the Week
A knife left by an untraced foot marks where to lay the body—fácil.
Fiction
Design a way to kill those rats, and do it now, Fiori, do it now.
Poetry
It is here I learn the speech of men. The speechless guilt of every swig.
Poem of the Week
We have harvested nothing more than the stench of middle age.
Story of the Week
He smelled like the bars my mother took me to in the middle of the day.
Nonfiction
He probably should have arrested or at least reported me to someone.
Story of the Week
Daofu was a cluster of lights bubbling up in the belly of a darkened plain.
