The world shut down abruptly one Monday before anyone had a chance to really think about it. I’d been in bed in my mom’s back bedroom watching Star Wars cartoons and smoking a bowl. I’d been committed to a pretty easy night when I received a text from mom: the governor was shutting down all… more
Author Archives: Ben Drevlow
The Hardest Thing
FICTION by Kim MagowanThe last time I saw my father, he was weak but not in severe pain. It was a wealthy form of hospice; he was sitting up in one of his fancy, overstuffed, silk-upholstered armchairs. He told me that the hardest thing about dying was that he couldn’t sleep at night, and I remember feeling surprised—wouldn’t… more
Swim, Swam, Swum
FICTION by Barrett HathcockMax didn’t even have to ring the doorbell. I came out as the van pulled up. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so eager for the visit but it didn’t occur to me hang back, to be cool, not yet at least. It was late summer, just before the start of eighth grade. I was… more
Man to Man
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Jason SchwartzmanIn the voice of this charismatic stranger, basketball is a mystical game you can control before the ball is even in your hands. There’s a way of feeling out the court, of knowing where to stand. He generously shares his knowledge with me, as though, like the sun and the stars, it belongs to everyone.… more
Betrayal
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Kent Jacobson…bookishness and cultivation, so treasured by those who possess them, are no guarantee of human value…. Nobody is a more worth-while person for having read Yeats. – Anthony Lane I scratch notes for a piece to describe a social divide I experienced as a child in a factory town in Rhode Island. I… more
Pandemic Plummets
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Robert VaughanEveryone has their own tolerance and focus with how to stay connected during the last two years, or as we say Post Pandemic (are we ever, truly?) With masks and vaccines or not, and travel dribbling away, parties and gatherings somehow obsolete, many of us, myself included spent more time, not less, on social media,… more
Four Fights
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Dan MoreyFight #1 My first fight was with this guy on our block who didn’t have any friends his own age. He was always hanging around the younger kids, teaching us to smoke, swear and vandalize. He liked to talk about sex, too. One time he asked me what the nastiest thing I ever saw was.… more
Loving and Forgetting
FICTION by Robert ScottLOVE Friday in the Student Union basement bar meant ‘70’s night: soul, rock, disco, funk, reggae. ‘They should do one each week, or two. It’s too much of a mix.’ Billy leant on one of the sofas that lined the dark, graffitied walls. Between his middle fingers he held the rim of his empty plastic… more
Three Stories
FICTION by Glenn VerdiONE NIGHT ONLY The only time I ever saw James Brown perform live was through the Lone Star Café plate glass windows on 13th Street in light snow at midnight. It was the week before Christmas, 1981. I was single, in my late twenties, and had made the mistake of asking out the woman who… more
Two Stories
FICTION by Caelyn CobbI’m sorry about the things I said when I thought the world was ending The morning after the end was supposed to happen, I woke up in the bunker I made for us. On the surface cameras there was still nothing. Just the woods and the wind and everything going along as it always had.… more
