Wall Street Journal sports editor Robinson and executive news editor Clegg open with a football fanatic named Howie Roseman, who had pursued a position with a NFL team since high school. Finally hired to formulate salary-cap strategy, he became the league’s youngest ever general manager. For all his analytical savvy, Roseman was edged out of […]
The author explains in his introduction that he wanted to create pieces that “hung there in midair, suspended” without categorizing them as prose poetry, flash fiction, or micro-fiction. The very short entries presented here, sometimes only spanning a few pages, generally introduce a single character, capture one consequential moment, and culminate with an ironic reversal. […]
Olivia Sol is a Harmonic who spends her time calculating possibilities and ensuring proper distribution, stabilization, and efficiency in her work for the Heldfast government and in her personal life. As she works to keep her society in balance, she rationalizes cutting off resources to various groups while maintaining compliance within the system’s metrics. When […]
Francine Garcia’s parents must leave her and her toddler brother, Alfond, with Auntie Flora; Francine’s infant brother Ramón needs heart surgery, and her parents will be spending the next month in Atlanta while he undergoes the procedure. Though Francine’s upset about the disruption to her routine and the separation from her parents, she finds solace […]
“At home, I was the center of everything.” Wild Princess has it good and knows it. The words “She showered me with attention” are paired with an image of a pair of peach-colored human hands with painted fingernails giving Wild Princess a beauty treatment. One day some cardboard boxes appear, and “then the suitcases came […]
After young Memory Feather’s father runs off with a “French hussy” and leaves her and her mother, Virginia, nearly destitute in New Mexico, they reluctantly move to Virginia’s hometown of Belle Cote, Mississippi. Virginia detests the town’s bigotry and insular attitudes, and she dreads being dependent on her loving but judgmental parents, but it’s 1953 […]
Carla’s thrilled that Vision Screening Day’s approaching. She hopes she’ll need glasses because no one else in class wears them. Her friend Buster scoffs, “You like to be different.” Next day, Carla’s wearing self-made purple pipe-cleaner frames. She tells Buster she wants to see what styles and colors will flatter her when she gets real […]
Who would guess that U.S. domestic military bases harbor more types of rare animals than national parks do? Making that claim, Collard points to relatively recent changes in general official attitudes toward the environmental effects of military tests and exercises, while highlighting efforts to protect and restore populations of three vulnerable creatures in particular—the red-cockaded […]
It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to […]
In their closing statements, the artists pose with favorite pooches, sometimes in childhood snapshots. Elliott’s accompanying comments, which range from two words for the Old English sheepdog (“Hair! / Everywhere!”) to affectionate rhymed or free verse sentiments, add further buoyant notes. Still, the illustrations steal the show—beginning with Ebony Glenn’s gallery of Labradors and their […]