Category: Features

On Voice, Rhythm and Experimenting With the Short Story: An Interview With Jamil Jan Kochai

By Bareerah Y. Ghani To say I’m obsessed with Jamil Jan Kochai’s latest collection, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, would be quite the understatement. It’s a fantastic,...

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52.1

 Purchase a copy of Issue 52.1 here. Fiction The Boys’ Team by Nikki Barnhart Hidden Truths of Reupholstering by Wendy Booydegraaff The Infinite Time Around by Ellie Cheng Not the First, But...

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Good Endings: A Farewell From Editor-in-Chief Timothy Johnson

Timothy Johnson In storytelling, endings are essential. I’m aware of the school of thought that stories aren’t about the endings but the journey; however, as a writer, I usually don’t even...

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This Is Not The Essay I Meant To Write: On Writing Into Uncertainty

Megan Pillow Here’s a secret: every night when I go to sleep, I put my dog Lucy’s collar under my pillow. When I toss and turn, I hear the jingle of the tags. It was the sound of her in the...

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51.2

2022 Spring Fiction Contest Winner A Bed Filled with Birds by Faith Shearin 2022 Spring Nonfiction Contest Winner Ariel by Lucien Darjeun Meadows 2022 Greg Grummer Poetry Contest Winner New Theories...

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Issue 51.2 is Here!

At long last, here it is: phoebe’s spring 2022 contest issue. For this one, we received thousands of submissions containing your best work, and our readers and editors toiled for months to whittle...

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On the Outskirts: A Review of Dur e Aziz Amna’s “American Fever”

Bareerah Y. Ghani Dur e Aziz Amna’s riveting debut novel examines adolescence, that no-man’s land of skepticism, anger, and a yearning to at once reclaim yourself and be who the world wants you...

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Richard Thomas’ New Short Story Collection Is a Masterclass of Dark Fiction Persona and Experimentation

Timothy Johnson I’ve been following Richard Thomas (but not in a weird way) for years. He is not only an exemplary writer, but a shining example of what it means to be a literary community member,...

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The Uselessness of Fog: How Paradox Haunts Emily Wilson

Christian Stanzione Paradox isn’t the problem we take it for. Our want, or at least mine until the past few years of academic dithering, is to think of paradox as a sort of unsolvable dialectic—a...

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Nonfiction as Contradiction: On Jami Attenberg’s Memoir “I Came All This Way to Meet You”

Lena Crown “No fantasy is wrong,” Jami Attenberg writes in her memoir I Came All This Way to Meet You, released in January of 2022 by Ecco Books and Serpent’s Tail (UK). No fantasy is...

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