STORY OF THE WEEK

Society By Kaitlin Roberts

Society

By Kaitlin Roberts
I was just starting to tell people how your thirties are so much better than your twenties when I hit my midthirties, and my life felt like it might explode.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Washington By Caitlin Roach

Washington

By Caitlin Roach
In our first half year here, time pitches impossibly. The baby stumbles into his first steps, the older boy begins dreaming in daylight away from us.

POETRY CONTEST

POETRY CONTEST

Open to all poets. Narrative is always looking for new voices, and all entries will be considered for publication. Each entry may contain up to five poems.

Please see the Guidelines.

RECENT AWARDS

Recent Awards for Our Authors

Recent Awards for Our Authors

Year in and out, many of our authors receive notable awards, including the BASS and O. Henry prize, and many others. You can find their works here.

NONFICTION

NONFICTION

NONFICTION

The Measure of All Things? By Hal Crowther

The Measure of All Things?

By Hal Crowther
There are mornings, not few enough, when I feel like burning my birth certificate and resigning from the human race.

NONFICTION

Tina Turner and My Father By Deborah Paredez

Tina Turner and My Father

By Deborah Paredez
A diva’s voice elevates a song into a diva anthem by carrying both struggle and perseverance, both trauma and triumph.

FICTION

CARTOONS

FICTION

The Rooms By Susan Minot

The Rooms

By Susan Minot
What she wanted, she found herself saying before the sob choked her, was to be able to live—not just with another person, but with herself.

CARTOONS

Cartoon Art Volume 2024-04 By Various Artists

Cartoon Art Volume 2024-04

By Various Artists
New laughs with a modest matador, some fashionable wishes, a new approach to exercise, the fruits of hard labor, and more.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Fire Emblem By JP Allen

Fire Emblem

By JP Allen
Autumn to autumn, I hold your face in cardboard under my bed till I place it on my paper altar for the Day of the Dead. Well. Most years I forget.

POETRY

Requiem By Bruce Bond

Requiem

By Bruce Bond
The more dissonance you hear, the more you listen, the more it tears from the bone. You could weep for months, years. And then, you stop.

POETRY

Passing and Other Poems By John Freeman

Passing and Other Poems

By John Freeman
I look up and meet a woman’s eyes. It’s early evening the night could go another way and for the length of a stride it could.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Gargantuan By T. De Los Reyes

Gargantuan

By T. De Los Reyes
My childhood is a city where tenderness was frowned upon, yet you are now holding my body, whose shape is exactly what I need it to be.

POETRY

Rasam and Beans Curry By Supritha Rajan

Rasam and Beans Curry

By Supritha Rajan
When I raise a spoon of beans roasted with coconut to my mouth, what I see condenses to a series of images.

POETRY

The Reader in Quarantine By Sharon Olds

The Reader in Quarantine

By Sharon Olds
The reader was no longer fifty, or sixty. She did not really think of herself as an old woman, though she called herself one.

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

POETRY

Lightning Takes the Form of Hope By Reed Turchi

Lightning Takes the Form of Hope

By Reed Turchi
There is nothing I can do, or say, so I turn up the radio, drown myself in climax of guitar to match the boiling in my blood.

POETRY

The Loneliness of Fireworks By Zhai Yongming

The Loneliness of Fireworks

By Zhai Yongming
Fireworks and bar girls all dance in revelry before they subside, in the end, into loneliness. Anyone can go wild in this moonlight.

POETRY

Home Is a Verb of Motion By Grace H. Zhou

Home Is a Verb of Motion

By Grace H. Zhou
On a bald knoll, circled by on-ramps and overpasses, weathering and weighted is a concrete behemoth for the gods of want.