Forever in Youth

We spent a lot of our free time throwing rocks at cars. That’s just sort of what you did growing up in the sticks with not a lot of stuff to keep you entertained.

Fiction Pick: ‘Yellow-Bellied Birds’

Ask anyone about Bill and the first thing they’ll mention is his white t-shirt. It’s the only shirt he ever wore.

Fiction Pick: ‘Bad Things in the Fog’

I snapped myself out of the daydream, yet again befuddled as to why I was considering Hemingway.

Fiction Pick: ‘Cincinnati Does Not Exist’

Jo never thought of himself as a river guy, per se, yet one morning he awoke in a canoe, floating down a body of water that clearly was a river.

Fiction Pick: ‘The Old Caver’

Arturo was nearly an old caver and dreaded becoming like the men who would drink rum and share their own legends throughout the night.

Fiction Pick: ‘Me and Konrad’

‘Given what I’d done, and the speed with which they were pursuing me, my only reasonable course of action was to disappear into the woods.’

Fiction Pick: ‘Flower, beast or Hitler’

At that point in my life, there was a lot of — how should I put this — fumbling around in the dark.

Fiction Pick: ‘The Eternal Forking’

‘Small decisions, elongated over time, can be just as consequential as big ones.’

Fiction Pick: ‘Surface’

‘All Paul could think about as he tried to maneuver his way around a lethargic old lady in the cereal aisle of Food Lion was ‘Good God, you old hag, could you move any slower?”