Issues

Blue Ridge Bobby

Blue Ridge Bobby

The door opened and Johnson Gibbs stood solidly in it. His blue eyes were very bright. There was full sunlight now and it made a burning glare on the snow. Against this harsh light Johnson’s figure loomed black, black as velvet, blackly burning, and his voice sounded deep and hollow:…
Little Piles of Change

Little Piles of Change

Colly was having a pint with Pat in Kavanagh’s after work. Pat had won twenty euro on a scratcher that morning and Colly knew it had been burning a hole in his pocket all day, that he’d be gunning for a pint. Colly was happy not to be going home…
In Conversation: Marianne Worthington

In Conversation: Marianne Worthington

As a child growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the 1950s and 1960s, Marianne Worthington was surrounded and subsumed by country music. Her parents often tuned their television set to WATE, the local station that aired Knoxville businessman-turned-mayor Cas Walker’s Farm and Home Hour variety show, which featured established and…
In Conversation: Jayne Moore Waldrop

In Conversation: Jayne Moore Waldrop

In “For What It’s Worth,” one of the stories that populate Jayne Moore Waldrop’s tender, linked story collection Drowned Town, a character muses about “generational labor.” The notion is at the heart of this book, which considers how the federal government’s seizure of land in western Kentucky to create two…
Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet

If Jaya had been paying closer attention, the tea wouldn’t have been necessary. It had seemed like an extreme measure to take, relevant only to those with severe anxiety instead of distracted suburban women like herself. Yet how mild were its effects now, just the amplification of these animal sounds…
The Husband Tree

The Husband Tree

My daughter is working, early, in the yard. I hear her footsteps from my bedroom, my windows overlooking the teardrop of grass and the ring of hostas and ferns, the Japanese Maple on the very edge of my property. It’s been this way all summer. She’s left her job, moved…