An excerpt from “Love and Kierkegaard in the Age of Trump” By Rachel Howard (fiction, ’09) published at The Los Angeles Review of Books:

Love and Kierkegaard in the Age of Trump

I LIVE IN SEMI-RURAL Nevada County, California, and a year ago, in my gym, I overheard a tall, pale, buzz-cut, older-but-still-muscled man — a man I had once witnessed huffing in the direction of the TVs above the treadmills, “I don’t care what color you are, when an officer pulls you over you do whatever he says!” — I heard this man complaining to a friend at the bench press. “Liberal media,” he said, snorting at one of the TVs. “They twist everyone’s words. They make me sick.”

This was the week after neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, the week after Donald Trump picked up the narrative the right-wing media had prepared — the narrative the neo-Nazis had baited — by blaming counter-protestors for violence “on both sides.” I suspected I should stick to my StairMaster, but my skin twitched. For months I had watched the gym’s bank of TVs broadcast competing news stations side by side, the cross-captioning of each talking head suggesting parallel black holes, and I could hold the tension no longer. I crossed the gym floor, and stood at this man’s shoulder. I said, “I’m equally troubled by Fox News, if you want to know.” He drew his spike-haired head back in shock. And then this man and I stared, mutually baffled, as the whole gym watched.

That standoff now seems innocent. In the year since a white nationalist killed an innocent woman in Charlottesville, more Americans have moved their turf wars off Facebook and into the streets. In my grocery store parking lot, confederate flags are now popping up alongside the Make America Great Again bumper stickers. A few weeks ago, at the local “Families Belong Together” march protesting the separation of children at the border, “Motorists at the intersection responded by honking their horns, popping wheelies on their motorcycles, flipping the bird, or screaming ‘build the wall’” — so reported the front page of our little local paper.

[…continue reading here]

An excerpt from “Rivington” by Andrea Donderi (fiction, ’14), published at The Catamaran Literary Reader:

Rivington

For a while there hadn’t been much out the window but skunks and fog. The last audiobook ended this morning as we’d crossed down into California. Now there was nothing on the radio but talk shows for getting riled up or ballads for crying and by this point even those were sputtering out.

Rivington’s email had mentioned two roads. They’ll both get you there, he said, but the one you want cuts straight across the pass. The wrong one squiggles up into the mountains. I must have mixed them up, because the farmland gave way to forest twenty minutes ago. Now things were getting narrower and steeper and twistier. The first few spatters of rain were steadying into a down – pour. It was getting dark fast and there wasn’t anywhere to turn around.

I’d hoped we could make it through this last stretch without stopping, but in the seat behind me, Tupper was whimpering and panting a little. He probably had to pee. I did too. The headlights lit up a diamond-shaped sign, warning yellow, with the silhouette of a leaping deer. It had been a couple of months since my job had evaporated. Our whole company had folded.

I hadn’t been attached to the work and I wasn’t panicking yet about money, but “folded” was the right word for me too. I had no idea where to go next. My parents had owned a garden center near Louisville when I was growing up; sometimes I missed it. I’d posted something about maybe working with plants again. […continue reading here]

An excerpt from the poem “Border,” by Sarah Pemberton Strong (poetry, ’15), published at The Nation:

Border

Things different over there
the words for them different
the things themselves

all the same

she put her flesh
in the mouth of a coyote
so that he would take her

a cross

to mark the place
where someone
died trying

two white sticks

the ghost of cactus
and the clouds
back and forth […continue reading here]

An excerpt from “I’m Never Told of Family Funerals” by Greg Rappleye (poetry, ’00), published at American Magazine:

I’m Never Told of Family Funerals

Not since the wake when I was 9,
when I stole a cushion from Benny’s couch
and propped Aunt Rose high in her casket,
sliding a Pall Mall between her fingers
and a bourbon tight in her grasp,
all nestled among the amber decades of a cut-glass
rosary they’d looped through her veiny hands,
a relic she’d carried home from Lourdes
the summer after the Salk vaccine,
when the greater aunts said Surely now, the Blessed Virgin
would cure Aunt Rose of polio. No matter.
In the afterlife, I knew Aunt Rose would toss
away her brace, her crutches, and two-step
among the American Beauties; that not even Jesus
could begrudge her a celebratory smoke
and sip of whiskey, once he’d seen her dance.  […continue reading here]

An excerpt from Q & A with James Robert Herndon (fiction, ’11), published at The Astounding Analog Companion:

Q & A with James Robert Herndon

Our readers were introduced to new Analog contributor James Robert Herndon with his short story “Eulogy for an Immortal” in our current issue [on sale now]. Read on to discover how the story came to be and where James finds his inspiration.

Analog Editor: What is the story behind this piece?

JRH: “Eulogy for an Immortal” came from a union of two things.

The first thing was that I had just discovered woodworking and loved it. For people who spend a lot of time in their heads, finding a tactile hobby you enjoy can be so pleasurable that it becomes all-consuming. There was a brief period in which I looked at almost everything through a woodworker’s lens. Could I build a chair even more comfortable than the one I was sitting in? Could I build new kitchen cabinets out of scrap materials? Could I build an addition to the house all by myself? A few months later, at the Clarion West Writers Workshop, I decided to write a story about a more extreme version of that mania and how it could affect other people. I had a long conversation with my classmate M. Huw Evans about whether or not it might be possible to make plastic using the approach described in the story, and if so, what the process would be. (Any chemistry errors are entirely my own.)

[…continue reading here]