Inlay

Author of The Lunatics' Ball (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press, forthcoming) and The Missing Girl (Black Lawrence Press). Longlist, Wigleaf Top 50. 9 Notables, Best American Essays, CNF Flash editor, CRAFT Lit Journal. www.jacquelinedoyle.com

Always love @miriamgershow.bsky.social! Read her new story in @flashfrog.bsky.social !

Love this brilliant essay by @jilltalbot.bsky.social in this week's Short Reads (@index.short-reads.org.ap.brid.gy).

Time to think about civilizations long before ours and admire these cave paintings in Spain. www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

I have a new Substack post. On my recent creative nonfiction. And on hybrid writing. open.substack.com/pub/jacqueli...

Three stories from Jacqueline Doyle @jacqdoyle.bsky.social in our Spring 2026 issue! newworldwriting.net/jacqueline-d...

Start your summer #writing on the #road with a virtual 4-week #nonfiction writing class. #writingclass #cnf #literaryessay #memoir jilltalbot.net/register/p/w...

Who knew? "Carolyn Keene is not a real person, but rather a pseudonym shared by the ghostwriters who collectively brought Nancy Drew to life." Girl Detective Forever open.substack.com/pub/abigailo...

May Teng's prize-winning essay in CRAFT will be posted in early June. This one is also a stunner.

Mental health disorders were the 6th-most common topic featured in banned books during the last academic year — a devastating statistic. Here are 24 banned books to consider this #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth https://bookshop.org/lists/mental-health-awareness-month-a-banned-books-reading-list

My mother watches a lot of TV and she’s fond of conspiracy theories, and on the one hand, it’s really annoying, but on the other hand, I have to admire the way she makes her boring life interesting. I shared this w my nonwriter hub and he said, wow this writer is talented! 👍👍 @jacqdoyle.bsky.social

The long read: For tens of thousands of years, these Palaeolithic artworks were unseen. When they were rediscovered, onlookers marvelled at their vivid beauty. One of the world’s leading experts took ...

And some thoughts on hybridity and The Lunatics' Ball

Maisie Fails to Anticipate the Ordinary As her body began to break down, first one joint at a time—knees, hips, shoulders, then the discs in her spine, then

New World Writing Quarterly

Dawn Tasaka Steffler

A lifetime of Nancy Drew

In this piece of flash prose, author Jacqueline Doyle, ponders the connection between politics, family, and forty-three monkeys that escape a lab in South Carolina.

In the last academic year, mental health disorders were the sixth-most common topic featured in banned books, comprising 29% of literature censored in public schools.

So frigging happy to have a story in @flashfrog.bsky.social! And this art is absolutely perfect.

by Jill Talbot | A body in motion ...

May Teng explores the nuances of coming home and leaving home.

NEW STORY⚡️🐸 “Don’t Chase” by @miriamgershow.bsky.social is now up! Art by Tricia Sichko flash-frog.com/2026/06/01/d...

Some beer-soaked dance floor in a bar outside Boulder. I’m twenty-eight or twenty-nine, wild inside a pocket of bodies and an I’ve-gone-away mind, lifting a sweaty bottle of two-buck beer above my head like a lantern. He’s watching from the crowd’s edge. Since he moved in months ago, I devise ways to disentangle, disappear. Distance has become a habit. Night after night, I sit on the end of a faded futon while he sleeps in the next room. I drink until the wine takes me down the back roads of bad choices, where I retrace missed exits, check my rearview for deleted messages and unanswered knocks on the door of my last apartment in Lubbock. In the dark, I stare at the snow-burdened trees outside our windows. Glass after glass after glass. One Saturday afternoon, I slip away to the patio of a pub, where I sip Chardonnay and listen to the skitter of leaves (brisk wind). He pulls up a chair. I pull a book from my bag. I have a history of this: _leave me be_. ~~~ It’s been years, almost twenty, and I remember how he and I moved in the dark—his chest against my back, the way I asked him to do it. The way my cries rang as loud as our neighbors’ wall phone upstairs. The way our neighbors shyly smirked at us most mornings. Those mornings he lumbered up the steps and ducked out the door on his way to work in those Carhartts, that beard. I’m thinking of this because a few nights ago, I fell into bed with a bearded stranger who wore Carhartts. That cotton gold like a lantern. It takes so little to take me back. It’s like that moment in Sarah Manguso’s _The Guardians_ : “I know it isn’t him, but when I see someone who resembles him I stare, take in as much information as possible.” So how much could I take in when I took him inside me? I can’t be the only one who sometimes moves in the dark with memory. I can’t remember my way around any city I’ve left behind. So much gone. I have a history of going, of going back, of thinking _go away,_ _go away,_ _go away_. Right now I’m sitting in the booth of a faded bar along a highway on my way back to Texas. I’m staring out a dusty window (wobbly table, sweaty bottle). Greyhound bus, UPS double-trailer, white construction truck, car, car, blue pickup, SUV, cement truck, semi, semi, semi. On the other side of the highway, trees bend in the spring wind. * * * **Jill Talbot** is the author of _The Last Year: Essays_ , based on her 2019–20 Paris Review Daily column. She’s also the author of _The Way We Weren’t: A Memoir_ and _Loaded: Women and Addiction_ , a collection of personal essays. Her writing has appeared in journals such as _Agni_ , _Brevity_ , _Gulf Coast_ , _Hotel Amerika_ , _LitMag_ , and _Southwest Review_ , and has been recognized seven times in The Best American Essays series. She has been a featured writer for Aquinas College’s Contemporary Writers Series, University of San Francisco’s Emerging Writers Festival, and The Literary Arts Institute at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, among others. Learn more at jilltalbot.net and on Instagram @jill.l.talbot. This essay first appeared in Brevity #62 (2019). * * * ****Help keep**** _****Short Reads****_****going.**** Become a supporting subscriber or make a one-time donation. Share this essay on: Facebook | LinkedIn | Bluesky __Short Reads__ is 🍻 edited by Hattie Fletcher; 📖 fact-checked and proofread by Chad Vogler; and 💭 designed by Anna Hall. This issue was 🛻 delivered to our 2,767 subscribers by Stephen Knezovich. ### **From the archive** May 28, 2025 “Crushed” by Wendy Fontaine | Young love, young heartbreak. May 29, 2024 “Pantoum for 1979” by Brenda Miller | Two steps forward, one step back. May 31, 2023 “Library with Hyacinth, Girl, and Guns” by Sue William Silverman | A still life. Explore the entire Short Reads archive. * * *

Scenario 1 I land in Jakarta just in time for Chinese New Year. I can smell the cigarette smoke and rain before the plane even touches the tarmac; my body retrieves memories faster than my mind can…

The lost dog sign was stapled to a telephone pole, one corner flapping in the wind. Don’t chase, the sign read. Will run away, witha picture of a dog—fluffy little terrier, wet muzzle—between Don’t…