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Your intelligence and charisma would serve you well in life.

My advice can be succinctly expressed in three words: Persist, persist, persist!

“Watch your purse, dear,” Aunt Florie whispers.

If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.

Maybe she’s gay. I wonder if she masturbates when I’m out of the room.

She has wings of rouge on her cheekbones, her beak blood red.

The author reads her story, a finalist in the Winter 2013 Story Contest.

When his father was out cold he tied him up, roping his arms to his sides.

He sees the slight swelling of her breasts in the open collar of her blouse.

Find a hair in the rose bush, wrap it around a thorn until that thorn is soft.

My father was neither kind nor strong in his bruising.

Death is a home unseen by the side of the road, the rifle barrel aimed.

Here’s a first, he said, some nutbag wants to dig the grave himself.

“And if you ever tell anybody what I’m about to tell you, I’ll deny it.”

The store was one of his last-ditch efforts to make a pile of money.

I had never thought of bed before as anything but an innocent place.

My parents had seven children; some of us have bank accounts.

Manuscript pages from The Blue Flower and The Bookshop.

Byron’s mother read things to him: Language is fun. Play. Let’s play.

I returned to Vietnam with a tape recorder to collect ca dao.

We pushed through the doors, back into the audition, among the lithe adults.

Somehow, Captain Brown made himself respected in Cranford.

Yup, that’s me. Dirk Fish. Funny, right? Fish who likes to fish!

“Mom, don’t you think the fucking racism is worse than my profanity?”