“I told him of my streak of bad luck: the handcuffs, drunkenly berating the cops, the way they escorted me out the subway station with my hands behind my back—all the things I didn’t tell my mother. I was a pig roasted on a spit, helpless and ashamed. I didn’t know what I had the right to feel and maybe he could tell me. Increasingly, I am looking to him for signs. New York was different from when I left it, volatile and strange, like I was always doing something wrong. I asked if he felt similarly– that it was complicated for him to be back home. Secretly I hoped he’d say yes because I like to imagine us going through the same things.”
– Except from “Things I Would Write on a Brick and Throw Through Your Window, By Nora Mayers, BFA 2026
“There’s a woman I’m really jealous of and she’s writing a story that I think is about how we create ourselves and if the real self is separate from the false self and what are the physical markers of our false selves which clue us and the people around us into our real selves which is also what this story is about kind of so maybe when I say that’s what I think her story is about I’m just projecting. But I just saw a brief glimpse of her room in an image and I see that she has a lamp which I have had in my amazon wishlist for a couple of months. And the lamp is shitty and cheap looking and probably wouldn’t make me all that happy and probably doesn’t make her all that happy but it does make me feel like at some point we both saw this cheap shitty lamp and decided that it lined up with the way we want other people to perceive us and that does make me truly happy in a way which feels profound and important. And now I’m perceiving her and her lamp and identifying with it which is the purpose of buying a lamp anyway because we all have overhead lights these days. The lamp is doing its job. It’s illuminating something.”
– Excerpt from “I actually never wanted to kill myself in high school” (2026), By Trent Tournour, 2026
“When he was younger, Malcolm loved the scorch of the sun and would pay no mind to the sweat and stench of summer. Back then he could never stand to stay inside. Not when he could lounge under direct sunlight and enjoy its warmth without worry because his desert skin would never burn. But that was before all the scars and missing bits.
Though the burns have healed, his nerves are permanently damaged and his skin is sensitive in a way it never was in his youth. It’s days like this, when the heat is merciless, that Malcolm clings to the chill of the freezer and never ventures outside if he can help it. And it’s on these days that pain is at the forefront of his mind.
If someone asked him to rate his pain, Malcolm would raise both hands, his answer being an eight and a half because with his missing fingertips he couldn’t give a ten. Even indoors, the lumpy skin of his scalp is set ablaze with old flames that were never fully extinguished. All over, his flesh is heavy with heat and itchy with sweat, and he would do anything to cool down.”
– from Some Coward; Afraid of Red, Annabel Ramos
“When reaching into her bedside table, her pointer finger crash lands into a sticky pool of old ketchup. Jordan likes to avoid cleaning up as much as possible, covering it with a bad “I’m saving it for later” joke. She hates eating in bed. She likes it cold at night. Her mother would crack the window open, gently calling in a night breeze to allow her head to rest. She hates the cold when Jordan steals the blanket and allows the fan to throw direct insults at the small nightgown she thought would work.“
– from Wake Up, Emma Stallings, Class of 2029
