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再見, Goodbye, Shalom: Back in Chicago

After five weeks of travel in China, New York, and Israel, somehow it’s not weird to be back in Chicago. I adjusted to the banalities of everyday life –doing dishes and laundry, cooking, riding my bike to work, work –a lot faster than...

Chicago (Courtesy of Windy City Eye)

你好, Hello, Shalom: Beijing Nightlife

While it was raining when my plane landed in Beijing, it was in the 70s and sunny most of the next two weeks. I was staying on the 24th floor of an apartment building and could see the surrounding mountains nearly...

In Time’s Rift: An Interview with Graham Foust

For many American readers, In Time’s Rift will be the first introduction to the German poet Ernst Meister. Published by Wave Books, the collection consists of short, concise poems that “at once entice and irritate the mouth and mind,” as translators Graham Foust and Samuel Frederick write in their introduction. Staff writer Gina Myers recently...

Graham Foust

你好, Hello, Shalom: Bikes, Beer, and Baozi in Beijing

The Airport Express elevated train flies past the stagnant Tuesday evening traffic and I’m welcomed to the city by the corporate offices of Mercedes, Caterpillar, and Microsoft. Through the haze and rain shine the bright yellow lights of an Ikea. Did...

Nan Luo Gu Xiang Hutong, Beijing, China

Baby Barbecue: Fiction by Suzanne Farrell Smith

To My Ex-Best Friend: Thank you for the invitation to your Baby Barbecue. The invite (not to mention the title) surprised me. Never would I have expected to be included. But there, tacked on to the lengthy recipient list’s tail end, was my old email address, one I stopped using three years ago, one you...

Baby Barbecue

Snap Judgements on 5 Days of Olympic Competition

America and China are awesome. Tied at 23 medals apiece, it’s obvious why these are the top two nations in the world: America because it sucks in freakishly gifted people from all over the globe, claims them as its own, then gives them frightening and overbearing mothers intent on living out their failed ambitions through...

Olympic Badminton

How to Win (and Lose) on Jeopardy

Let me make something clear: I am a nerd. Not one of those pickles-and-plaid, post-ironic, twenty-first century nerds either. I’m talking about a data-hungry glutton for the esoteric, a devoted slave to pedantry, a straight-up Urkelian nerd. My glasses are so thick that, were you to try them on, you’d think you were dropping acid....

Out of Cape Cod Tonight: An Interview with Khaliah Williams

Last week, we published Khaliah Williams’ What the Bay Broke, a somber short story about summer spouse swapping in Cape Cod. After its publication, we chatted with Williams via email about the inspiration for the story, her literary life, adultery, Vampire Weekend, and what her graduate work at Iowa Writers Workshop taught her about writing and...

FP Photo

What The Bay Broke: Fiction by Khaliah Williams

It was Clay who suggested that they invite another couple for that last weekend. His college roommate Craig and his wife Lisa had recently transplanted themselves from Golden, Minnesota for the more harried pace of New York. Because the three weeks Olivia and Clay spent in Wellfleet differed little from their lives in the city—just...

Mayo Beach 2

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