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.