We have even included some excerpts for you to check out. As you read through the Table of Contents, click on the orange links to catch a glimpse of what this issue holds for you.

HOLIDAY REINHORN FUCK YOU
"I don't know you," he said. "But I probably know your mother," I said. Lies can surprise you when they come so easily.

EMILY RABOTEAUBEULAH'S QUILT IN THE HOUSE OF STICKS
He had indeed overturned my desk and was now underneath it, naked, moaning and pushing against the rug with his heels.

NAMI MUNBLUE FLY
He tapped his favorite vein, and I kicked the Sterno out from under him. He was so focused on his arm he didn't care about the small fire clinging to his leg. I stood there watching him nodding and half swatting his calf before realizing that maybe I should help.

JUNG H. YUN HAN GAHP
The trouble these gifts caused. The dyed and woven clothes with labels that none of the village women could read, but always wanted to inspect. Colors so bright that she was always seen against the tans and browns of her neighbors.

SCOTT SNYDER THE GOODBYE TRAIN, An Excerpt
My girlfriend and I are not rich people–not by a long shot–but we live in a mansion, one of the last real mansions in central Florida.

VESTAL MCINTYRE SAHARA
On my first Saturday afternoon, they sent me out in the kangaroo suit to wave at cars on Northside Boulevard. That's when I got kidnapped.

DANIEL ALARCÓN FLOOD
We spilled onto the avenue and fought like men, side by side with our fathers and our brothers against their fathers and their brothers. It was a carnival. My hands moved in closed fists and I was in awe of them.

FRANCES HWANGTHE OLD GENTLEMAN
Agnes couldn't help but laugh, even though there was a slight pain in it, as with all surprises. How ridiculous that her father should be courting someone across the country. To be thinking of love when he should be thinking of the grave.

JILLIAN WEISE LET ME BE RECKLESS WITH THE WORD LOVE

MAGGIE ROBBINSExcerpts from SUZY ZEUS GETS ORGANIZED
Suzy Zeus Sets Some Limits
Suzy Cleans Up
Suzy Takes the Wheel
Suzy Takes a Trip
Suzy Takes Her Time
Suzy Refuses
Suzy Moves On
Suzy Mourns

ROB DENNISFROM NOWHERE WITH LOVE

ELIOT KHALIL WILSONFINAL WORDS OF THE UHH MANMINNESOTA: CAN'T COMPLAIN

LOST & FOUND
OVERLOOKED DEBUTS OF 2004

Ryan Harty's Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona by Peter Rock
John Dalton's Heaven Lake by Fred Leebron
Bret Anthony Johnston's Corpus Christi by Chris Offutt

RICK DEMARINIS RASPBERRIES
It wasn't O'Naille on the phone. It was a hysterical woman. "Andy! You've got to get over here right now! He's going to kill me! Please come, and hurry!" "Who is this?" I said.

JAMES SALTER, by CHRIS OFFUTT
Last summer, at the Tin House Writers Conference, Salter and Offutt discussed Salter's early military career, a high school classmate named Kerouac, and the source of an extraordinary recent burst of productivity.

JEFF KOEHLER THE FALL OF QUINCE
Once sacred to Aphrodite, the quince was so suggestive that newlyweds received the fruit as gifts, but the musky-scented fruit has since fallen into obscurity.

We have even included some excerpts for you to check out. As you read through the Table of Contents, click on the orange links to catch a glimpse of what this issue holds for you.

Robert Olen ButlerSEVERANCE
Very still, I hold my rifle drawn across my chest and I am careful even in the breath I draw.

Dan de WeeseGRAPHOLOGY
I found myself, in this week since my father's death, spontaneously able to reproduce his handwriting from the tip of my own pen.

Zakes Mda an excerpt from THE WHALE CALLER
They will use rib bones to construct the skeletons of their huts, ear bones as water-carrying vessels, other bones as furniture, pillows, and beds.

Ellen Litman DANCERS
They were tall, good-looking, and careless. They descended upon Tanya's life, took up residence in her apartment. They were dancers and nothing could be done about it.

David Lehman The Party of Ideas Space is Limited

Michael HaineyToo Soon

Chase TwichellCinderblock

Stephen Dunn For Many YearsThe Man

Henry IsraeliFor LJI, at Her BIrth

Chris Offutt, by Tony Swofford
Tony Swofford talks to fellow writer and law-breaker Chris Offutt, about skulls, prose-as-taxidermy, his father's secret porn-writing career, and the sub-par jail of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Edward HirshPortrait of the Artist as an Old Man
The writer remembers novelist and longtime New Yorker editor William Maxwell and the magnetic ten-year friendship that seemed to arrive full-blown.

Zakes Mda, by John Kachuba
Mda's plays and novels are well-known in his native South Africa, but the writer is just gaining prominence in the Unites States. With John B. Kachuba, he discusses magic, the economic significance of beekeeping, and reopening the old wounds of apartheid.

Francine Prose Remembering Spalding Gray
Recalling a perfect listener, inveterate storyteller, and a man for whom cocktail hour was essential to the whole concept of civilization.

Jayne Anne PhillipsDream Talk
Drowned birds, comely Indian film stars, a writer waist-deep in a lake-what's dream life telling us? Jayne Anne Phillips explains.

Susan BellRevisioning the Great Gatsby
Gatsby is more than great writing-it's also a tour de force of revision. An inside look at how Fitzgerald and his editor, Max Perkins, buffed one of American literature's most celebrated books to a high shine.

Krista Landers Angel Love King
To be redeemed, you had to be a sinner in the first place. The knowledge made me nauseous with self-loathing. Jesus wouldn't even like me.

Tommy Wallach on Eugene Ionesco's Stories Number 1-4

Leslie A. Wootten on W.R. Burnett's Dark Hazard

Nathan Alling Long on W.S. Merwin's The Miner's Pale Children

Frank Bures on Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Whispered Stories on Buru

Jeff KoehlerThe Lotus Eaters
Just what were Homer's lotus-eaters nibbling, and where can the author find some? .

Brian BookerPENNSYLVANIA: A NATURAL HISTORY
Flora and fauna of Penn's Woods-they're not what you'd expect.

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