This is the first contribution to Vol. 1 Brooklyn by Tobias Carroll, who does the site The Scowl. He will be telling a story at our upcoming Vol. 1 Story Series this Friday, June 19th A year before, Byron had received a letter from Nathan recounting the circumstances of Gordon’s death. Along with it were photographs of the event that followed: the ritualized destruction of four half-scale effigies of Byron. One had been drawn and quartered; one, burned; one, dropped […]
The Last Good Book I Read Was the Lyrics to Haitian Divorce Tattooed On Your Inner Thigh by Zack Lipez
This is Zack’s second story on Vol. 1 Brooklyn. His first can be read here. You wrote a book called “All Dust Settles”, and you’re not even embarrassed. What the fuck? I wrote a book of short stories called “Why Won’t You Let Me Love You”. In place of a jacket photo, I had them put a picture of you, crossed out, with a beanie that I hand sharpied in on every individual copy. My mother wrote a memoir called […]
Somewhere I Have Heard This Before By Justin Taylor
Stan was eleven years old and things had got so bad between his parents the only thing they could agree on was that he should spend some time out of the house. Since it was coming on summer anyhow they packed him up just like they’d done in years previous for camp, though this year there was no money for that, no way. They sent him instead to his aunt, his mother’s sister, a distracted woman, twice divorced, who lived […]
Wendy at 23 by Brendan Garbee
Before she met Daniel, Wendy was submerged in the same thinking as all the other young people around her in Oakland, a way of thinking that claimed sexual encounters could be free of attachments and of entanglements. And so if she met a boy she thought was attractive, or funny, or interesting, she would not let a sense of propriety keep her from taking him to bed. She had been a virgin all the way through high school, afraid of […]
Advice for The Newly Cloned Wooly Mammoth By Zack Lipez
Dear Not Yet Of Drinking Age Woolly Mammoth, So. They brought you back. Good. I’m glad. We’re all glad. And if, throughout your “grazing of the permafrost” (as they say) you get the feeling that the “we” that encompasses the “glad” is not as large as a newly minted wooly mammoth might, maybe, hope, well-no, that’s just not true. Everybody is grateful for more company. I won’t be the last to tell you that it’s cold outside, and, even if […]
Something Useful by Justin Maurer
This morning I awoke with my girlfriend Minnie, both of us hung over beyond belief. She was off to Sheffield for work, and I had to drive a bright blue Ford Transit minibus with a broken window on the left sliding door to a place called Snaresbrook, a suburb of East London. I took the tube with Minnie and I disembarked at my transfer point, kissing her goodbye. Twenty minutes later I was in the southern borough of Lambeth. “English, […]