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The Huma Bird Never Lands

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Back in Iran for the last time, Navid Sinaki bonds with his cousin, Bahar, but when she decides to emigrate, the cruelty of their differences is laid bare.

Ghosts Again

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One afternoon in early October Elena and Yamioletta were finishing warm forty-ouncers on Rey’s porch when Yamioletta offered to drive Elena around. Elena thought it might be like off-roading in the hills, which she had done with Sam and Chris in high school. They drove across the fields under electrical towers and along the fire […]

Michael’s Marriages

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It’s not a long story, but it’s a story as old as time. Michael’s family is filthy rich. They invented Jell-O or something. Michael will never work a day in his life. These are Michael’s marriages. (I have not been married myself.) Marriage #0 This marriage lasted one second. Her smile felt stale. Her tongue […]

Her Past Was Stronger than the Pull of Our Present

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“Let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest.” — O. Henry My mother is the ghost of my life, like her mother was the ghost of hers.  In deciding not to have children, this is how I have ensured no more children will see ghosts. Or become them. In […]

Museum of Beautiful Women

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Natalie Wood’s motion sickness pills / the pajamas Whitney Houston wore for seven months / Caroline Flack’s sweatshirt & matching sleeping mask / the suicide note Margaux Hemingway never wrote / the pink hyacinths in Sharon Tate’s hair on her wedding day / the inkwell Frances Farmer threw at a judge in 1943 / Peg […]

Chasing the Goose

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An email arrives from BOLD Nebraska. I no longer live in Nebraska and have never been bold, but I do like to know when it’s time to plant the sacred Ponca corn, and if plans to build Keystone XL have finally been buried, and if Jane Kleeb is a real person because  what would the world be like if […]

THE OTHER WOMAN

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It is simply unconscionable that, when the New York Review of Books recently elected to republish two books by Diana Athill, After a Funeral wasn’t one of them. Easily Athill’s best work, After a Funeral recounts her relationship with Waguih Ghali, an Egyptian writer who committed suicide inside her London flat in 1968. Ghali lived […]