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There, There: Confronting Gertrude Stein (Again)

Catharine R. Stimpson

Gertrude Stein is one of the biggest, boldest, baddest, most audacious of all modern cultural figures. Born in Pittsburgh in 1874, she died in 1946 while undergoing an operation for stomach cancer in the American Hospital in Paris. I began to study her almost by accident fifty years ago—I was spending a year at Yale on a postdoctoral fellowship, and the Stein papers were in the Beinecke Rare Book Library there. As I sat with

Redneck Lives Matter

Chris Kraus

The writer and critic Chris Kraus (I Love Dick, Social Practices, After Kathy Acker, et al.) lived part-time on northern Minnesota’s Iron Range for seven years (2013– 2020), researching The Four Spent the Day Together, a novel inspired by a series of violent methamphetamine crimes involving teenagers. The narrative is intercut with police reports, court documents, text messages, interviews, and monologues. This piece is one of several studies culled from social media accounts and conversa-

Project Live Through This: A Nineties Op

Bett Williams

I met Jimmy and Troy at a Santa Barbara gay bar on a trip back home for my dad’s eyelid surgery. I had been back the month before, too, trying to score a job on the set of my My So-Called Life—the lesbian therapist who seduced me when I was sixteen arranged a meeting with one of the producers—but had returned to New Mexico when I got the call that the show was cancelled. Now

Boneyard

Rachel DeWoskin

A singular bleating made it clear that Frances had not saved the lives of her goat’s three kids. She had woken to growling, scrambling, and was that gnawing? Before her thoughts could clarify, she had run barefoot onto the porch, grabbed the axe that sat by the woodpile, and descended into dark so total she relied on her body’s knowledge of the yard’s slope. She shouted, swung, tried to make herself monstrous. But the predator

The Bubble: An Interview With A.M. Homes

Jennifer Baumgardner

A.M. Homes. Photo by Marie Sanford. When A. M. Homes was growing up in Washington, D.C., her teachers were skeptical that she’d successfully write a check, much less a book. She dropped out of high school and eventually found herself at Sarah Lawrence, where she met Grace Paley. Homes’s books—The Safety of Objects (1990), The End of Alice (1996), and Music for Torching (1999), among others—have been translated into twenty-two languages, adapted for film and

‘Summer Field’ and ‘One Swan’

Amber Flora Thomas

Summer Field Probably I made the sag in the barbwire where anyone could get through to the field, summers after the rancher moved the sheep off to better grazing. I got there when the wild rye and brome was high and the crickets swung too heavy for the yellow fray, not caring when their catapult levered my arms and chest. I collapsed on the dry stocks that gave way to my . . . Subscriber

Little Faggot

Michelle Tea

Kyle Channing Smith. At the ticket counter of the bus station in Austin, I cleared my throat and conjured the dignity of a thousand proud women in distress. Black and white women with wide-brimmed hats and slim skirts. I arranged my face in an earnest yet proud expression. My eyes would connect deeply, hopefully, with the ticket seller, a woman who was ignoring me. She was a little jowly, her hair either wet from her

‘Every Secret Is a Little Casket’, ‘Death of a Neighbor’, ‘To Live’

Kathryn Kirkpatrick

Every Secret is a Little Casket When we got to my father’s grave, my mother apologized. Anthills puckered at the seams of the grave. Crabgrass hemmed in the nameplate. It was a flat grave, not high but deep. Another beside it with her name and single date seemed to wait, undisturbed. Seemed to wait. Tending was what she thought she hadn’t done: tiny minutes unstitched . . . Subscriber Access Required This article is available

Gratification

Kayla Martinez

Illustration by Mike Perry I surveyed his dorm room. Black comforter with matching pillow shams, athletic trophies above the bed, Narcos paused on the TV, a musty glass of water on the bedside table (dust gathered around the bottom), a bottle of CVS-brand lube. I catch a whiff of BO covered with something tingly, woody, irritable: Old Spice NightPanther, uncapped, on the floor at the foot of the bed. I could’ve been in my own

Characters: They’re Just Like Us!

Rebecca Saltzman

Mrs. Dalloway realizes she left her wallet at home. Dorian Gray keeps his skin youthful by using a daily SPF, and also by having a cursed painting in the closet. Clytemnestra obsesses over true crime podcasts. Lady Macbeth gets period stains out of her favorite outfit. Finding himself transformed into a giant insect, Gregor Samsa is relieved to have an excuse to cancel plans.

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