Tag: Reading

All Stories, General Fiction

In A Place Far Away by Dianne Willems

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I was looking for a place to die; somebody recommended Brooklyn.

 Man that’s a good first sentence, John reveled. Maybe the best. Definitely one of the few that had stuck by him all these years, resting in his subconscious. Although I can still recall by heart, he thought, the following: I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Chirstian because of Owen Meany.

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All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever – A True Tale of Stories Literally by Dale Wiliams Barrigar

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“No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.”

– Antonin Artaud, Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society

“We are all of us alone.” – Harold Bloom

“As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK.”

– Hunter S. Thompson

            “Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do!” – Harold Pinter

            “NO EASY WAY TO BE FREE.” – The Who, “Slip Kid”

Warning to the Reader: The following essay will sometimes appear to jump and leap from thing to thing with no apparent reason. As in life, there is a reason, even if it isn’t apparent. While under the influence, the author believes this discontinuous form is a part of the modern condition. Thank you. – D.W.B.

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All Stories, auld author

Auld Author: Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Master of Ballantrae’by Michael Bloor

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Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) had a short life but was a prolific author. His first work (a history) was published when he was just 16 and he went on to write 13 novels, 6 collections of short stories, and several books of non-fiction. They weren’t all wonderful: a sequel (‘Catriona’) to the brilliant ‘Kidnapped,’ is sometimes cited as a perfect example of an ill-advised sequel; and ‘St Ives,’ incomplete at his death, was then completed by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, mores the pity. But there are quite enough diamonds among his output to justify his global reputation.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Love Handles by Susan DeFelice

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After his anxiety attack in the barely cold sea water, Barry walked to the outside European-style tiki bar where a woman with a roiling accent was singing Sinatra, with just a stand-up bass and conga player accompanying her.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Working the Dirt by J Bradley Minnick

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Mighty Broom left the first notch in the dirt at three that afternoon: the first of hundreds of parallel lines exactly five feet apart across the width of the halls that started in front of the Janitors Closet and ran the length of Weatherspeake High. Wilson never had to measure the rows. He had the five-foot knack.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Book Stuff by Ryan Priest

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There were men and women throughout the library reading books. A librarian wearing a sweater over her shoulders sat at a desk organizing a stacks of three by five index cards. A young man sat at a table, his face visible behind two columns of heavy, academic tomes. He held his finger up to his lips in the universal sign of “Ssshhh!”

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Dreamt Preface for a Reading at Nahant Library by Tom Sheehan

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(“Please come to read for us from your new book.”)

I want to let the audience enter the cubicle where the work came from. This is what I’ll tell them:

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