I am excited to introduce this sublime group of writers who grace the fiction column this month. They have taken me on many roadtrips, many mind trips to worlds hidden behind closed doors and desperate landscapes. I hope you are shaken and changed by the ride as much as I’ve been! Not even a rest-stop for Cracker Jack’s and beef jerky will slow down the intensity.

 

Eric Sasson is our featured writer for the mid-June issue. His exceptional and memorable story, with a title that had me before I read the piece, “Author’s Journals for the Dictionary of Hannibal Schaumberg, the Language of Non-Existent Words,” is not one to be missed. And don’t forget to check out what he’s working on now in our interview.

 

John Riley delivers two distinctly different, yet compelling stories. “Among Wild Things,” is a heartbreaking piece that leaves me breathless, as though I am sitting next to the father and daughter in the waiting room. Unforgettable. “Plastic Jesus in an Upright Tub,” is another phenomenal story filled with the brilliant wonder and pathos of two kids and the plastic-jesus-of-a-target who came to town.

 

MaryAnne Kolton drops us into the world of online dating and the psychotic turn it can take. You won’t look at an eclair the same way after this one!

 

Michael Dickes brought me to tears with his story, “Beeko.” A boy trapped inside a disease inside a body inside a building, who changes the lives of those around him.

 

Leah Sackett takes us into the close minded, judging world that surrounds and strangles whatever life is left of the narrator, Kitty, in her despondent, realistic tale, “A Point of Departure.” There seems to be no escape.

 

Rebecca Entel delves into the existence of a speech writer for the president. In “The Yak,” she dunks us, head first into the never ending demands of a job that is a life that is a job, while attempting to be a presence in her husband and daughter’s life, as well. A juggling act where the balls are either in the air or dropping, you decide.