In our morning reading: an interview with Eric LaRocca, book recommendations from Casey Plett, and more.
Sunday Stories: “A Man Like That”
A Man Like That
by Jennifer Wortman
I was at the bar, gazing lovingly at my phone to hide my hope and fear that someone would approach me, when The Fox jabbed my shoulder and said he’d fix me. To be precise, he said, “I’ll fix you good.” Then he sauntered away, disappearing into the crowd of consorting bar patrons, none of whom had to feign romance with their phones. Some of these people, I imagined, had been fixed by The Fox. If you asked someone what happened when The Fox fixed them, they’d just flash you a coy grin and avert their eyes. I hated the people The Fox had fixed, mostly because I was so broken I wanted to break myself. I woke up each morning with a massive urge to fling myself at the nearest wall until I’d crack open and the part of me that wanted to do such things would ooze free. I was pretty sure this wasn’t how a person was supposed to be, and yet, this was the person I was, which just intensified my desire to fling myself against walls. I had suffered some losses, some turmoil, a sexual assault or two, but what woman hadn’t? Why could I neither consort with the bar patrons nor stay home and languish in privacy?
Currents, an Interview Series with Brian Alan Ellis (Episode 44: Jennifer Wortman)
JENNIFER WORTMAN is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow and the author of the story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love (Split/Lip Press, 2019). She lives with her family in Colorado, where she serves as associate fiction editor for Colorado Review and teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
Sunday Stories: “Something to Find Me”
Something to Find Me
by Jennifer Wortman
I couldn’t lock the bathroom door and I couldn’t open it. The door swung free, revealing an old woman, small and glaring, in the hallway, her hair long and dark as a girl’s. She wanted me dead and I started to scream. A hand grabbed my shoulder, shook me awake.