Story|Houston – Issue IX

Selected Fiction


Anabel Graff

“The first imaginary friend I can remember actually liking was Bobo. Really, I guess, he was the first friend that Sylvie allowed to like me.”

HomelessOnes.May24     Anabel Graff received her BA from Vassar College and her MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University. She is the winner of the 2014 Prada Feltrinelli Prize and The Fiction Desk’s 2015 Ghost Story Competition. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Day OnePrada JournalJoyland, Printer’s Row and The Fiction Desk. She lives in Sag Harbor, New York, where she teaches creative writing and is at work on her first novel.

Christian Winn

“I wondered what Andy would do if he’d had the chance to see this man, or if they could ever exist on the same piece of earth, or if maybe part of Andy was really living in this other human. I wondered if there was another me out there.”

We Came South

     Christian Winn is a fiction writer, poet, and teacher of writing living in Boise, Idaho. His fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, The Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Chattahoochee Review, Santa Monica Review, Greensboro Review, Bat City Review, The Pinch, The Strip, Phoebe, Revolver, Every Day Fiction and elsewhere. His debut collection, NAKED ME, is recently out from Dock Street Press – dockstreetpress.com – who will also be publishing his collection of novelettes, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU IS WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME, early 2017. You can find out more, or contact him at christianwinn.com.


Michael Daley

“Utter momentary silence, and his sweeping right arm, while the chorus’s eyes followed, slowly rose, then fell and rose again as a first shower of high notes poured over the room, raced along the stucco walls…”

All We Like Sheep

     Michael Daley was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He entered religious life at a young age, and upon leaving, was wild in the streets, protesting wars and seeking a life of experience. He holds a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts and an M.F.A. from the University of Washington. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Hudson Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, Rhino, North American Review, Writers Almanac, Raven Chronicles, Seattle Review, Jeopardy, Prairie Schooner, Cirque, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cascadia Review, and elsewhere. His reviews and essays have appeared in Pacific Northwest Review of Books, New England Review, Raven Chronicles, Port Townsend Leader, and Book/Mark Quarterly Review. He has published three full-length collections of poetry: The Straits, To Curve, Moonlight in the Redemptive Forest, and a book of essays: Way Out There/Lyrical Essays. He has been awarded by the Washington State Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Commission, Artist Trust, Fulbright, and the National Endowment of the Humanities; recently, Pleasure Boat Studio published his translation of Alter Mundus by Italian poet Lucia Gazzino. Of a Feather has just been published by Empty Bowl of Port Townsend, a division of Pleasure Boat Studio, New York.
Elegy
Catherine Brereton

“That day, he used the wooden cricket bat. We grew to learn that it was the mildest of his sports-related punishments. Some of us did not know that then, this being our first introduction to the discipline of Mr. Fairfield’s junior class. Mr. Fairfield was breaking us in gently.”

elegy_bats

     Catherine A. Brereton is from England, but moved to America in 2008. Her most recent work can be found in The Establishment, The Toast, Crack the Spine, Ekphrastic, The Indianola Review, and Literary Orphans, and is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Cheat River Review, Star 82 Review, and Litro. One of her essays was recognized as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays, 2015, and she is 2015 winner of The Flounce’s Nonfiction Writer of the Year Award. Catherine has an MFA from the University of Kentucky, and she lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her wife and their teenage daughters. You can follow her on Twitter @CABreretonKY.