Dear Sir, When I was nineteen, I told my creative writing professor what I wanted to write about in my next short story: the Halloween party where my friends and I were groped by anonymous hands in a very large crowd. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Erin Sroka
An Emergency Issue: Art and Engagement
Starting on September 15th we’ll be releasing a special issue of The James Franco Review: Art You Engaged/Are you engaged? Writers, editors, and artists around the country explored what it meant for them to be politically or consciously engaged in their work and to also examine literature’s relationship to safety. Every time I read … Continue reading
Fiction by John Englehardt
Seaside Paul was on the couch, tuning my guitar. He doesn’t know how to tune a guitar, so he was just tightening the E-string. I had already told him to stop once. The string was making that high pitched crackling noise, then it snapped. So I slapped him across the face. For a moment, it … Continue reading
Fiction by Ahsan Butt
Red Eye by Ahsan Butt Stuck. Laid over between the place I was born and the place I live. Four a.m. spent spacing out, stretching against a stiff seat, legs laid out on my Hilfiger bag. Denim man in the row behind me has never seen anything like me. Black greasy hair of … Continue reading
Fiction by Kamala Puligandla
My Friend Jesus by Kamala Puligandla My friend Jesus says he usually goes by Chuey or Chuchi or Leon, which is his last name, but considering that we’ve just officially met, and we’re at school—“a very official place,” he says—he’ll have me call him Jesus. “Thanks,” I say. “Yeah,” he says offhandedly and then stares … Continue reading
Fiction by Jean Burnet
How To Be Lucky by Jean Burnet Because they could afford it, they had a large wedding. Dick’s family was all there, shooting looks in her direction. Rita’s was too. In the few short hours before her union, her mother—who made a fuss of everything—tried to teach her something about love. Her friends came, too. … Continue reading