Diary as Workbench as Archive as Net

Journal with pencil

Diary as Workbench as Archive as Net
by Stephanie Sauer

 

On Taking Note

There is a diary, which is to say a daily, in which I take note of the goings on in my work. Did I write today? How did it come? Did the words hide away? Did I edit? Was I surprised? Did I discover something new? Did this catalyze delight? Did an ending weave itself in a way I wasn’t expecting? Did I trudge through the hours unrewarded? Did the thing I tried fall flat upon the page? Did it crawl into the waste bin and evaporate? Did I give up early and go for a walk? Did the walk unearth something buried? Did I return to the work afterward?

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Books of the Month: May 2024

May 2024 Books

It’s a few days into a new month, and you can probably tell what’s next: we have some May books we’d like to recommend. Stylistically, they cover a lot of terrain; you’ll find everything from experimental short fiction to haunting meditations of contemporary politics here. Read on for some suggestions for the weeks to come.

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Sunday Stories: “Where the One-Eyed Man Is King”

Beach chairs

Where the One-Eyed Man Is King
by Alex Behr

There was a little hole. A hole in the shoe’s sole. The shoe was behind a tree, a lackluster beach tree near the bay, but no one remembered losing a shoe much less putting it there. Frito barked and carried it over. Dropped it in front of Sharon, sitting on a plaid blanket. Sharon took that as a good sign. She was on meds. So were her mother and her sisters and nieces, but not the men in the family. Well, they took statins that ruined their erections, a rare side effect, but too bad for them, but they didn’t take anything for the anxiety that resulted from being on statins, or losing their erections. But if they weren’t on statins they might keel over, like when moving rocks or taking down storm windows. They drooled on their pillows. They told good jokes. 

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