Editorial: Fiction
issue #17
by Michael Bryson
Four new stories fill the new fiction
issue, chosen from 145 submitted. Many excellent stories, as usual, were
turned away. Thank you to all who submitted.
How to introduce this new issue? First
the simple way: Here are the stories.
Grade Nine
Flight
by Rebecca Rosenblum
He Had a
Pulse
by Karl L. Kruger
Yu Gwine
Live Inna Stoosh Place
by Carole Langille
Excursions
by Ben Kalman
Second, what can I say about
them?
Two of them feature a death. All of
them seem to be about boundaries between people, what they mean, how
they can be crossed or not. Rebecca Rosenblum's story is set in a high
school. Karl L. Kruger's story is set in Iraq, where he is currently
serving as a Trauma/En Route Care Nurse in Fallujah with the U.S. Navy
Nurse Corps. Carole Langille's story features both an inter-racial
couple and a same-sex couple: Do these labels matter? The story says,
no. Likewise, Ben Kalman's story explores how identity is challenged
when a Jewish youth in Israel travels to a part of town that isn't
welcoming.
As editor, I find these connections
curious, because when I am reading and selecting stories I don't think
about themes or connections. I pick out from the submissions that I
respond to most strongly. Perhaps there is something going on with me
that causes me to respond strongly to these stories at this point in
time. I'm not sure.
I hope that other readers will also
find these stories moving and memorable. They are all excellent examples
what the short story form does best. They draw the reader into their
worlds and provide us with both shocks of recognition and shocks of
surprise. The human experience is both local and universal, specific and
general. Short stories give us both the familiar and the
startling.
They help remind us, ultimately, that
we are alive.
Michael Bryson is the
editor of TDR. He writes stories and works for the government.
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