ISSUES | winter 2025

Strange Bedfellows  Shakespeare used the phrase “strange bedfellows” in The Tempest when court jester Trinculo, shipwrecked on a stormy island, crawls under the cloak of the beastly Caliban: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” In 1611, this could be taken as half literal and…    read more

Falling  Melissa Yancy    He had done so many drugs that drugs could no longer reach him. As a boy, Lee had been told he possessed a fine mind and…    read more

The Hard Kind I wake with quinine in my dreams. I wash my hands in bleach water fold the mosquito net off the cot and step into the sun like…    read more

Endings  Jeanne Rogow    Making her way uphill in a green blouse and red skirt of tiered and ruffled tulle, Joya might resemble Aloe arborescens ready to bloom. At least, that’s what she was going for when she found the skirt in a vintage shop last week and bought it, having an excuse…    read more

The Story of My Eyes  Gustavo Pérez Firmat  For Leon Herndon  During my teenage years, when I heard things go bump in the night, it was usually my grandmother running into the…    read more

The Feeding  Laura Dedmon    She did what they said never to do: she went out on the water alone.   The house was small and close and sticky, beer cans and blankets clustered on…    read more

Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window Would it have been better to be illiterate? She holds her letter in both hands, has turned it to the light. Reflecting…    read more

Multitudes  by Rachel Lastra    The woman from outer space walks into the Save Mart on a Tuesday afternoon in 1993. Joey Morrison-Ortiz won’t know she’s from outer space until Wednesday, and on Thursday…    read more

The Language of My Father’s Dying   Askold Melnyczuk    “I always thought I’d die first,” said my mother as she watched my father, doped on methadone and oxycodone, whispering to the…    read more

A Conversation with Curtis Sittenfeld   Michael Piafsky    Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of seven novels: Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, Eligible, Rodham, and Romantic Comedy, which was picked for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club. Her…    read more

Cherished BATHA HALL (died Feb. 1698, aged 6 weeks) Hall Family Cemetery, Dennis, Massachusetts Behind the Cape Playhouse where, after work, I marveled at the construction of stage sets— imagined…    read more

The Role of a Happy Woman  Lauren Fath    At age sixteen, I wasn’t sure what to buy for two kids, ten and six, whose mother had just taken her own life. My logic, though it now…    read more

Jules Chéret and the Birth of the Modern Poster  Jules Chéret’s Rococo-style posters for such venues as Folies-Bergère and Moulin Rouge featured beautiful French women, most of them celebrities of cabaret,…    read more

“Time is out of joint”: Useful anachronisms in three novels about the future  Luke Dunne    Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Grove Atlantic, 2024, 224 pp., $17.00 (paperback)  The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball. Penguin…    read more

Anna Pavlova: Ambassador of Classical Ballet     The function of dancing is to give men the sight of an unreal world, beautiful, dazzling as his dreams. For dancing is pure romance, and it…    read more