This Week, I’m Reading…

One Story, created by Maribeth Batcha and Hannah Tinti

One Story is a literary magazine that—as you might guess—publishes one story at a time, in simple booklet form. It arrives in the mail (when I have an active subscription) about once a month. You can manage to read just one story when it shows up in your mailbox, right?

Well, apparently not, because this week I found a stack of 13 back issues in the formidable pile of literary journals in my study. Most were from 2022, but a few were much older. I set about reading them, and as I did, I was reminded of the things I love about One Story. Every story is well-written, and every one is different. Sometimes they’re experimental, sometimes they’re traditional. Sometimes they’re set in the present, other times in the speculative future or the fictional past. Sometimes I like them, sometimes not so much, but every time, the author is new to One Story, so no one gets to be their favored darling (as can happen with other journals). So far this week, I’ve enjoyed “A Mother’s Work” by Jai Chakrabarti, about a woman in New York City hired by traditional Indian families to break up the inter-cultural love matches of their children; “From the Comfort of Your Own Home” by Lincoln Michel, about a virtual reality writer’s retreat gone very wrong; and “World’s End” by Clare Beams, published way back in 2012 (I must have set this one aside to read “later”!), a historical piece about a young architect given a landscape design job way beyond his expertise. I also found Lydia Conidin’s “Sunny Talks,” about a trans boy faced with the gender identity of his favorite aunt, which I had read before and saved. In fact, several older issues still live on my bookshelf.

This is all great reading without the commitment of a new novel just yet. For kicks, I’ll finish today by sharing the first lines of some of the other One Story stories that lie in waiting:

Madagascar was not the first expedition on which I had accompanied my mother. (“What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us,” Laura Van den Berg)

I arrived at the Ma’abara refugee absorption camp set up in the newly established State of Israel in the winter of 1950, in the midst of the greatest snowstorm of the century. (“The Miniaturist,” Omer Friedlander)

The way it was before, after night-rest on the edge of the roof of the tea stall, the sun would flood the sky with colors, and I would begin to calibrate my sun compass. (“Let Your Body Meet the Ground,” Talia Lakshmi Kolluri)

Just before the pandemic lockdown, the day before everything shut, I adopted Libby at the animal shelter in Bay Shore. (“The Nicer Version,” Sharone Einhorn)

What are you reading this week? Let us know in the comments below!