An Interview with Chia-Chia Lin Nur Nasreen Ibrahim Photo Credit: F. Yang The Unpassing is an immigrant story, a coming of age tale, a family drama, and also a heartrending voyage through the natural world. Set in the harsh landscape of rural Alaska, CHIA-CHIA LIN contemplates the transformation of a grieving Taiwanese-American family after the loss of their daughter, through the perspective of their ten-year-old son, Gavin. The characters, who are all missing something, ques

The Children We've Been Isabella Esser Munera To start, you call a name: “Mateo.” The child looks up, face slack with horror. You lean on your wrists. “Call on someone.” The child refocuses their gaze, something sliding into place. A dimness brightens, hardens. He turns to look at his peers, now slowly backing into themselves, now shaking their heads— and Mateo, baffled by power, calls a name. The scale tips. Something changes. The class smartens, subtly, beneath the slow piv

———2018 World's Best Short-Short Story Contest Winner——— Gourd Queen Nick Almeida My sister has forgotten her shoes. My sister has forgotten her white shoes and is furious. My sister has forgotten her white shoes and is furious at her good-for-nothing bridesmaids, whom she has begun calling “those sweaty hoes.” My sister does not care much for me, either. It is fair, the family agrees, that my sister doesn’t care much for me. I have had several accidents. Falls, crashes, bonk

Mirror Girls Kira Bell My sister and I have a single magic trick: when we face each other from opposite sides of a window, it becomes a mirror. We lift our hands, wink, pull our lips in strange directions. We imitate dinosaurs and gyrate our hips in particularly bad dance moves. Our parents laugh at us. Our lovers shake their heads and pour each other drinks. Our pets stare, faces tilted and ears perked. They do not get the joke. § We are the same in all but fingerprints. In

Volume 38.1 Interns DIANA CALDERÓN is an Editing, Writing, & Media major, first-generation college student and first-gen Mexican American, passionate about immigrants’ stories. Previous to interning with SER, Calderón was a staff writer and editor for HerCampus, an online mag that “caters its content to college women.” ARISSA CUSHNIE graduated from Florida State University in December, 2019 with a double major in English and Communications. She has written for many publicatio

Prophets and Angels Weeping John Luckett I. Minutes earlier, I’d robbed Rusty’s Stop-n-Go. Heart pounding, mind racing, suffering from a chemical imbalance, my feet slapping the pavement, I ran from Rusty’s, hoping to escape the night. On the run from a double homicide, my goal was to take the stolen money and buy a pound of marijuana to support myself when I relocated in Memphis. Somewhere a dog was barking, aroused by the smell of fear. Bright headlights hit me and it had t

Next Year in Jerusalem Shira Elmalich My mother-in-law beckons me down the hall. “Come here,” she says, indicating that I should follow her around the corner. Instead, I hover near the door to the party room, where the activity is still going on––girls laughing and dancing, clinking their finger cymbals and shaking their hip-tied coin skirts. They tease the bride and foist compliments on her, feeding her honey-dipped pastries and sweet white wine. “It will just take a minute,

——— contest winner ——— My Father Teaches Me How to Slip Away Clarence Carter on in the background & there I sit, in my mother’s white Plymouth Stolen in the open, under advisement of This country’s laws & customs—I wait beneath The Hollywood Video’s fanatic purple lights— Their appliance buzz, sound of the spectral past, Crackling in & out—I wait For my mother to return, to go back To the only home I’ve ever known—But inside She’s been stunned-still at the sight of my father,

For Sale, Used At a corner store downtown you can buy a freshly refurbished soul-compacting machine with brushed nickel finish. High volume capacity, over seven billion psi, high-pitched cry muffler. Fully updated, but you can still see the original German craftsmanship. It’s got a pigmentation isolator, resistance suppressor, purity indicator. Lots of optional accessories too: night vision adaptor, snake or stripe decals, national anthem calliope powered by the goddamn gas e

Ambitious Dream Number Twenty-Three Well, the thirteen-member search committee in last night’s bourbon and coke dialed me up again at two AM to flatter the cut of my CV’s jib and offer me an interview on campus. The chairwoman’s voice, all honeysuckle and real sweet tea, told me they would very much like the chance to observe me teaching the good, the true, and the beautiful, and improving, meanwhile, the grammar of this spring’s eighteen-year-olds in their unnatural habit, h