Hi all, really privileged to have made the short story prize longlist for the CBC contest. Just released today: 32 people have been shortlisted out of about 2,400 submissions. This is actually the second year straight I’ve been longlisted in this contest! If you’re up for it, have a look here and you can see…
Mary is fifty pounds overweight. The building she works in is forty-seven storeys tall, but she only sees the lobby. She has calculated how many people work in a forty-seven storey building. It must be hundreds, but she never sees any of them, because her time behind the security guard desk is a night…
Plenty: A Story in Pictures Plenty: A Story in Words Smiling, faking, fast, that’s his face. That’s the last I’ll see of it. A mouth opens and shooting stars come out. “Here she comes,” whispers grandfather. It’s a wave.…
She comes out of the gate wearing jeans and a backpack. Jeans! When did she start wearing those? “Hi,” she says. “Radhika?” I ask. She gives me a hug and slips a bag of airplane peanuts into my pocket. “Who else? Some other cousin you were expecting?” “How’s India?” …
Wake up. No cars on the roads. No paper to wipe my ass. I drink coffee. Drink some more. Pour it down my throat until it scalds my insides and is coming out the other end in a continuous stream. I wonder why I can’t just recirculate this fluid,…
Anita, at five. Crawling up stairs. Gets to the top and tumbles down. “She should be walking by now,” says her mother. Outside, Anita holds a tree and lifts herself up. Across the street, music blares and a man hits a woman in the face. A car twirls out of the driveway.…
Anna must be six years old. It’s hard to tell from Chamali’s window. The girl scoots about the lawn, next to the rotted bones of a barbeque. She is swinging a broomstick without an end. Now and then, she goes to the curb and jumps on the road, as though daring a car to…
