Inside the Box – Travis Kurowski & Vito Grippi
Because, of course, when do we stop thinking about stories? We’re familiar with the beginning of Apple, just like we know the origin story of Superman (and Batman, and Wonder Woman, etc.). We know the tragedy of the Indonesian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Some of the stories of Jesus and Mohammad, of the Buddha. We’ve read about Oliver Twist and Scheherazade. The French Revolution. Arab Spring. John Henry. Sappho. Little Orphan Annie. Is anyone watching the final season of Mad Men in April? “Is Little Nell dead?” Once upon a time. And then what happened? One thing led to another.
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 Hard Feelings – Andrew Malan Milward
Thirty minutes break was what he was allowed for lunch. 12:45-1:15 usually, but if there was a lunchtime rush Mr. Stoughton sometimes asked him to stay on longer. He didn’t mind that though. Didn’t take but 100 seconds to eat his sandwich—the army had taught him how to eat without chewing, how to feel sated without tasting—which left a whole heap of time to relax.
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 Gone – MariNaomi
I’ve been thinking about my ex-boyfriend, Jason, wondering what became of him. Maybe it’s true that he died in an awful car accident, or maybe that’s just a rumor, but I find it hard to believe that he just isn’t anywhere at all.
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 Narrative Persuasion – Randi Shedlosky-Shoemaker
It seems obvious that the humanities and arts are interested in stories—they read them, they write them, they analyze them and discuss them.  Scholars in these disciplines reflect on what the author may have meant by a certain description or debate why the author set the story at this time and place versus any other time and place.  What may be less obvious is the interest of stories to social scientists. As it turns out, social scientists also view stories as a valuable tool:
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 Three Poems – K. Silem Mohammad
every day I see evidence that tells me I should be afraid/later I discover not all my friends are true/here’s a look at some cats
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Convicted Minimalist Portfolio:

Performance Art – Frederick Barthelme
We had to preview Tinker’s performance video project. Chantal’s condo at Forgetful Bay was all dressed up in 20th century modern, original Eames stuff, some Aalto, Risom, some stuff I didn’t recognize except to see that it was in the same ballpark as the stuff I did recognize. Most interesting was that nothing looked like a replica. “Great house,” I said.
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 The Solzhenitsyn Watch – Steven Barthelme
His eye dangled.  His eye dangled but still he could not get on television where people would love him, admire him, gush and shy—in his mind he could see the yearning expressions of their faces—little girls with silver buttons all down their back –   “Well, Jay (Johnny, David, Conan, Wolf, Rachel), I’m really nothing special, just the happy beneficiary of the kindness of a great many other people who…” he imagined himself saying.  Other times it was more like, “Oh you’re far too kind to an ordinary run of the mill superstar like myself…”
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 Charts – Mary Miller
“I’m going to marry him,” my sister says, standing in my kitchen. I don’t want her in my kitchen. I wonder if she can feel me not wanting her in my kitchen. 
“Do you love him?” I ask.
“He’s wonderful. He loves me so much.”
“That’s not a reason to marry him.”
“No,” she says. “It’s not.” She takes the Lean Cuisine out of its box and tosses the frozen entrée onto the counter. “But that’s not the reason.”
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 Conservation Genetics – Sam Ruddick
I moved to the desert to be a fish biologist. Nobody believes that when I say it, but the Colorado River runs right through the Sonoran Desert, and its full of fish with ugly names. Bony Tail Chubs. Razor Back Suckers. Gila Topminnows. I’d grown up out there and my older sister, Judy, was still there. She’d lost her husband the year before and stopped taking her meds since, and the lines between past and present had been erased by early-onset dementia.
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 Two Shorts – Kim Chinquee
Spread on my towel, I try to pretend I am a sponge, that it is raining. The sun on my skin. It’s five pm, and the only thing that feels hot to me now is another breakup. I’m forty-three years old and this one went on for two years before I started voicing disappointment. The sign says, “No swimming,” though I’ve swum here times before with members of my tri club. The water is shallow enough for my feet to touch the mud, the rocks, the seaweed. I swam here once alone, when it was hot, and the water was stinky. Now I smell my sweat from my fifteen-mile bike ride. I close my eyes and hear the waves. I hear the seagulls calling.
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 Excerpt from Taipei – Tao Lin
Eight people were in Erin’s five-seat car, which had gotten lost on its way from Paul’s book-release reading in Brooklyn to DuMont Burger, also in Brooklyn, when it was stopped by a police car, in Manhattan, around two hundred feet from the Williamsburg Bridge. The officer shined a flashlight through the driver’s window at the backseat without bending to see what was there, then asked Erin, 24, who had driven four hours that day from Baltimore to attend Paul’s reading and visit friends, to step outside the car.
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 Three Pieces – Marion Winik
If they were young, they googled the things they didn’t know. Some were things they were supposed to know, like the habits of the hammerhead shark. The perfect squares under 100. The phrase “rite of passage.” When they got bored, they googled images of peace signs, photographs of rainbows, a video of a girl singing about Friday and another of a baby laughing and laughing. They googled Anne Hathaway. If they were boys, they googled how to build a bomb. If they could get on the computer when their parents weren’t home they googled things they weren’t supposed to know, things like sodomy and lesbian and boob. Then they cleared the search history and googled hammerhead shark.
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 Excerpt from The Scientists – Marco Roth
Our department chair had ordered Australian Shiraz in surprising quantity. As the party thinned out and the older faculty left, the bar became self-serve. I wandered over to the fireplace with a couple of pilfered bottles and started pouring rounds for a band of British graduate students.  Whether it was the advanced degrees many of them already had from Oxford or Cambridge, or an academic culture that valued the ability to argue on one’s feet—one of them told me she used to play a game in which you had to speak on a randomly drawn subject for five minutes without stopping or saying “um”—they all seemed to project a polished suavity and astonishing articulateness that actually seemed to increase in proportion to the amount of alcohol they consumed.
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 Three Poems – Jeremy Lespi
My uniform is grey and green and light blue and I/never take it off. I can’t for to do so would mean my/death. And I do not want to die. I want to be /in your face like it’s springtime. Like it’s springtime/and we’re glued together. In the right context I /could stand for a generation. I could stand like I’ve been away for three days and I’m thinner than ever.
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Poem – Kristina Lucenko
Let’s talk about who stays and goes,/who hides and seeks. Before you can count/one two three I’ve grown/filmy wings, hidden my shyness in a fragile purse, /in these clownish lips, curved and phony/like in the movies, looking fashionable/in dusky overcoat and slash bangs, asking,
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 On Brevity – David Shields
bobs, tempers, college rejection letters, kinds of love, postcards, nicknames, baby carrots, myopia, life flashing before eyes, gummy bears, the loser’s straw, Capri pants, charge on this phone battery, a moment on the lips (forever on the hips), caprice, velvet chokers, six months to live, penne, some dog-tails, how long I’ve known you though it feels like a lifetime, even a complicated dive, tree stumps, a shot of tequila, breaking a bone, a temp job, bobby socks, when you’re having fun, a sucker punch, going straight- to-video, outgrown shoes, a travel toothbrush
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 Danger of a Single Story – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I’m a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call “the danger of the single story.” I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four is probably close to the truth. So I was an early reader, and what I read were British and American children’s books.
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