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Oh, how did people do it? How did they find some way to be happy?

It was the season of storm delays, of . . . shame and ghosts on trains

"In County": A new six-word story by Robert Olen Butler.

Part of my desire to be in London related to its writers.

Jennifer Haigh

The ashes of a human being are not ash. The body burns into wood.

“I want to stay in real yurts,” I said, “not yurts for Westerners.”

“Can’t you see Hemingway’s having breakfast with his grandson?”

Every room came furnished half-real & dead like mirrors on skin

Divorced. Wife living with someone else. Pregnant with his child.

The old-timer outside the guard station was knifing his own tires.

I realized you were my fourth love, and the system was always doomed.

He thought about kissing her. Then he decided that she was just lonely.

Together we invented intimacy, both its benefits and its horrors.

It is February in Ukraine. Juliana tells the reporter she just wants to live in her country.

The scent of lighter fluid and tobacco drifted in through the window.

At nineteen I lived for three months as an earnest cocaine addict.

she was right—hurricane being the name of the feeling, the twist of it.

I could throw one of these rocks at the moon and watch it fall.

The room barely fit a bed, a chest of drawers, and a rocker, all not hers.

We say America you are magnificent and we meant we are heartbroken.

“No one shoots when the army inoculates and hands out money.”

Jayne Anne Phillips recalls her friend, the legendary Sam Lawrence.

Sam was like family. He was the angel of my writing life in every word.

I was the man in her life. I know I’m different now. Now I’m a bird.

I’ve wavered in confidence, but never on whether I was going to write.

Sometimes I wonder if he—my father—looks back on that moment.

There’s something about traveling by plane. People tell their secrets.

One of the most important human capacities is compassion.

I put my hand on my stomach and had an image of the melting snowman.