In the 18 months since I’ve moved back to Chicago, I’ve learned a great deal about all that’s changed in this city of my youth. I grew up on Emerald Avenue, precisely 13 miles south of the setting of one of this year’s notable stories, and am myself a writer made by the history and geography of Chicago, but still the opportunity to curate this year’s Reader Fiction Issue may have done more to help catch me up on the current literary voice of the city than the last year and a half of teaching, writing, walking, and CTA riding. What I found in the most memorable of this year’s submissions was a palimpsest of the still hard-ass grit of old Chicago but also a quicksilver catalog of formal uncertainty and narrative innovation, the utterance of a former steelmaking city that’s now home to at least a half-dozen college creative writing programs.
“Shake Hands Like a Man”by Billy Lombardo
“The brakes squeal and cry like a child as the car comes around again and again. You do not like the way Tía Rosa breathes as if all the air in the world were not enough.”
“And When Were We in Delaware?”by Lex Sonne
“I should have said, ‘I’m so afraid that I will have to leave, and I know that you cannot help me.’”
“Sugar Pop”by Robin Kirk
“For one terrible moment, she saw the thing that lived in his eyes when he thought no one but Allison was looking.”
