2004 SFWP Literary Awards Program Prizewinner by J. M. Schuster From the Prologue After six years in the minor leagues, Edward Everett Yates gets called up to the St. Louis Cardinals; in his first appearance, the team inserts him as a pinch hitter for injured Lou...
2004 SFWP Literary Awards Program Prizewinner by Bethany Harvey Darcy’s been alone long enough to get good at it. She’s the only woman in her family to have passed twenty-five without being married at least once. Men leave her alone. She figures this has...
At home, Darcy takes off her shoes and socks and empties her pockets of keys and knife and guitar pick and driver’s license in a pile on the floor. The smells of stale smoke and alcohol cling to her clothes and hair. She opens the window, letting in a cold,...
Timothy D. McLendon Sweat was trickling from the crack of my ass all the way down to my socks. My feet were rapidly drowning while my toes performed an annoying rendition of water ballet. Even the thermometer atop the concession stand behind me was sweating tiny beads...
by Robert Levin Blanche Dubois always depended on the kindness of strangers. Me, I’ve always depended on strangers thinking I’m someone else. I’m referring, in my case anyway, to getting sex. I know it’s weird, but the assumption some women...
By the time the joint is half-gone, Taylor is a believer. It is killer weed. He recalls his rookie year when the sergeant lit some in a training class so they could smell it ‘ all the jokes, eyeballs rolling, dope-crazed pinko/hippie perpetrators listening to...
