Second place winner for The Jennie Hackman Memorial Award for Short Fiction (2022) The thing about living long enough to see the aftermath (living longer than she ever thought she would), is that Josie doesn’t quite know what to do with herself anymore. There was always something before. Something to…
Tag: long river review
“Moon-Stain and Crawdad Eater” by Charlie M. Case
CW: Death, Domestic abuse This is what is most important: the ache in scraped knees. The crawdads scuttling among river rocks. The groan of pipes in your cracked kitchen sink. Night stealing hours. Ponds like meters-wide tide pools. Mud stealing hours. The leak in your bedroom ceiling, the water damage…
“Knell Inevitable” by Charlie M. Case
CW: Illness, Death It came to me on the sixth night of my sickness, when the suffering had ceased to be new. I had been lulled into those familiar throes which, now that I was accustomed to them, deceived me into thinking that they were kinder. In came something—and I…
“The Ostrava Line” by Liam Kelsey
Contest winner for The Long River Review Graduate Award (2022) “What would you like to know about yourself?” This was what my neighbor asked me when I took my seat. He was wearing a black suit and had a thick laptop resting on his thighs. I asked him what he…
A Letter from the Editor: “Next not now”
From Anna Zarra Aldrich The theme for this year’s Long River Review was “next, not now.” Throughout the course of this semester we discovered the various meanings of “next” and found that each of our definitions differed slightly, which is part of the beauty of working with a large editorial…
Why I now have all the free time to write, yet I don’t do it
By Ryan Amato Staying home all day, avoiding contact with others, having less obligations than usual: This is the writer’s dream. Or, at least, it should be. For some reason, the idea of sitting down to write something just hasn’t crossed my mind, despite having nothing but free time to…