The High School Writing Contest opens TOMORROW! We can barely contain our excitement, so we’re watching last year’s winner, Helen Gu, read her winning poem “Mooncakes” at our recent Narrative Salon: www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/fall-... Details: www.narrativemagazine.com/narrative-fo...

“When I was born I saw death devour the birth of something, perhaps the first thing so deep now it’s hard to say, fruit perhaps, peaches on my mother’s table.” —excerpt from “Saving Just the Real” by Clarence Major

“Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.” —excerpt from “In Memoriam” by Alfred Lord Tennyson Happy last day of 2025! We hope you had an amazing year. 🍾

“He closed his eyes happily and lived for an instant in a purely olfactory world. The distant past returned—what part of it, he could not decide.” —excerpt from “A Distant Episode” by Paul Bowles

“It’s so delicate, the light. And there’s so little of it. The dark is huge.” —excerpt from “A Few Delicate Needles” by Rolf Jacobsen

“I'll rid the world of bad things. But first, I need to get more coffee.” —Liza Donnelly, “A Day in the Life of Woman Cartoonist” @lizadonnelly.bsky.social

Only a few more days until our Eleventh Annual High School Writing Contest is open for submissions! Do you know what you’re writing about yet?

“He ended every year in this manner, writing and dreaming.” —excerpt from “A New Year’s Gift” by Guy de Maupassant

“‘Isn’t this great?’ she said. ‘A bit of peace for ourselves?’” —William Trevor, “Another Christmas”

Join us in congratulating our Fall Story Contest winners! A huge round of applause to the winners and finalists! It was a joy to read your stories. www.narrativemagazine.com/fall-2025-st...

Cartoon by David Gomberg

“when the trench-coated hero, cigarette in hand, kissed the virginal heroine in the old movies on our 12-inch television screen, my father turned to me and muttered ‘Mush’” —excerpt from “Hard-Boiled Mystery” by David Grubin

“It’s just a great big old world with Santa and angels all around.” —Frank Gordon, “Angels All Around, 1956”

We’re celebrating Penelope Fitzgerald’s birthday today with these handwritten drafts: www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/fall-...

“So, Ida, are you a Jew or a nudist? Do you believe in Hanukkah?” —excerpt from Robin Hemley’s “All Good Things Are Surprises”

Our annual High School Writing Contest opens for submissions in 21 days!! Be artful, be original. Be bold! Pick a subject or issue that confounds the world at large or troubles your life specifically—it can be something outside your window, your country, or closest of all, something in your heart.

“An urgent reform is the standardization of Christmas presents. It is no good putting this matter off; let us take it in hand now, so that we shall be in time for next Christmas.” —A. A. Milne, “A Hint for Next Christmas”

“Words shed overcoats, come to me undressed, slender-limbed, they have no letters yet.” —excerpt from “Letter Spoken in Wind” by Rachel Galvin

“You hope you can be like the river and the music. You want motion to take you to a new place and want even more for the place you just were to be left far behind.” —Brent King, “Finding Absolution in the Flow”

Cartoon by Jake Goldwasser

“I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said.” —excerpt from “Wants” by Grace Paley

@caroledgarian.bsky.social is back to the alphabet this week with “dogma.” Join her for this week’s “A Word, Please.” bit.ly/3t85Mqp

“Strange times call for new words, or at least old words brought back.” —Carol Edgarian @caroledgarian.bsky.social

Your gift supports a new generation of writers. And . . .

“This father who found pleasure in hardboiled dicks, half-clad dames, and misogynist jokes, which my mother shrugged off with a smirk because she was the boss and he knew it.” —excerpt from David Grubin’s “Hard-Boiled Mystery”

Our annual High School Writing Contest opens for submissions in 29 days!! High schoolers, it’s time to get writing. ✏️ www.narrativemagazine.com/narrative-fo...

“Fuck it. I’m too porous. Everything rushes in. Everything that ever drove me crazy with dumb hope, every letdown. Here it is.” —Dion O’Reilly, “Oh for Fuck’s Sake” @dionoreilly.bsky.social

“We dressed in jeans and T-shirts, our long hair close in color, looking more like brother and sister than lovers. John had cut a strand of his hair, and mine; I had braided them together.” —excerpt from “Evisceration” by Maryanne Chrisant

“As I grow older and wedded by time, I spend so much more of it dreaming.” —Dan Gerber, “Now”

Cartoon by P.C. Vey

“violently in its magnificent eye, and as if seized in a maelstrom’s clasp, it swims for a while, but by and by abandons itself, slips from its own grasp” —excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Rose Window”

“To be so full of. Everything. At her age. It is very difficult.” —excerpt from C. D. Wright’s “Girl Friend”

“Give me language in true terrain Let me reach tendon vigor” —excerpt from “Stutter Poetica” by Talia Isaacson

This Giving Tuesday, support writing that inspires, empowers, and connects us. Thanks to supporters like you, young readers are able to find the stories that ignite their passion for reading and writing.

“We are wired to anchor consciousness to deep emotion, and almost nothing catalyzes emotion like art. Though my collapse in front of ‘Orange Functional’ was a moment of losing myself, it ultimately led to finding at least some part of that same self.” —Dean Rader, “Tilting at Windmills”

“When I die, I wish a part of me remains. You’ll stroke it and remark with surprise and delight how very soft it is.” —excerpt from Staci Halt’s “Soft”

“I believed, and still do, in the virtue of hard work. The ability to persist matters more than talent, forget about genius. The fates would reverse themselves. Our luck was bound to change.” —Bill Barich, “A Trailer by the River”

Cartoon by Rina Piccolo (@rinapiccolo.bsky.social)

TODAY is your last chance to submit to our Fall Story Contest! www.narrativemagazine.com/fall-2025-st...

We’re grateful for the stories that refuse to disappear. Gratitude, this year, means protecting their words. www.narrativemagazine.com/archive/auth...

Our Fall Story Contest closes TOMORROW, so make your final edits and send those pieces in! www.narrativemagazine.com/fall-2025-st...

“The slow-falling leaves contain the space of the story I’m pursuing.” —Rick Bass, “Writing in October”

“Let me remember there’s a door inside each flower, and we all slip through one day.” —excerpt from “Transcendentalism I” by Rob Shapiro (@rob-shapiro.bsky.social)

Join Carol Edgarian as she explores the history of “copacetic.” bit.ly/3t85Mqp @caroledgarian.bsky.social

“If she were making money, she’d hardly be sharing an apartment with a slightly delusional nymphomaniac and a socially awkward taxidermy collector right next to the ever-rumbling 1 Train.” —excerpt from “Loose Change” by Lara Waas

“Human language, Winston thought, was not adequate for spiritual union.” —Olga Zilberbourg, “A Dark and Empty Corner” @olgaz.bsky.social

“Art, like writing, is an invitation to be surprised, to be open to revelation. Alteration.” —excerpt from “Tilting at Windmills” by Dean Rader

“If others call you a maniac or a fool, just let them wag their tongues.” —Ha Jin, “A Center”

Cartoon by David Ostow

“If you are hidden treasure, mine, don’t let me lose what I have gained.” —Federico García Lorca, “Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint”