Baptism at the Cineplex 9
Fiction
Clint Bentley is a writer and filmmaker. His most recent film as a writer was Transpecos. This story is his first published work of fiction.
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Fiction
Lillian Johnson is an emerging writer and Literature graduate with a BA from the University of Exeter. Her story “Retainer on a Bedside Table” was published in Exeter University’s literary…
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Fiction
A. Grifa Ismaili is a Jersey-born writer whose work has appeared in Fiction International, Citron Review, Literary Orphans, and Press 53’s Everywhere Stories, among others. A recent Pushcart Prize…
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Fiction
Libby Heily is a writer based in New York. Her young adult fantasy series is published through Fire and Ice YA Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications including Daily…
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Fiction
Victor Yang is a queer writer and educator based in Boston. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, The Tahoma Literary Review, The Boston Globe, and…
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Fiction
Ian Baaske’s work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Warship, and The Puritan's Town Crier. His screenplay, “Daisy,” was a semifinalist in Zoetrope’s Screenplay Competition last year.…
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Fiction
Adam Byko is an MFA candidate and Provost Fellow at the University of Central Florida. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pinch, F(r)iction, and the Notre Dame Review among other…
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Fiction
Curtis Smith has published over 100 stories and essays, and his work has been cited by or included in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best American Spiritual…
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Victor Yang
For the first time, Xinran didn’t show up to our weekly Downton Abbey night. Without her, we fell out of the teenage numbers: twelve mothers spread across the La-Z-Boy set at Liping’s. Xinran said she had joined the group to work on her English, but we spoke to each other in Mandarin, and besides, her English couldn’t be good enough to understand the show. She probably wanted an excuse to have company, like the rest of us. We would never shell out twenty dollars for a movie ticket and a gallon of popcorn in downtown Lexington, Kentucky; none of us were that American. But we enjoyed Liping’s every Sunday. Suits and dresses screamed and sobbed on surround sound—a soundtrack that allowed us to forget, if just for an hour, the tantrums of our own adolescent children.
Five minutes into the episode, Liping cleared her throat. Those of us she had already told pursed our lips. Liping splayed her long fingers out on her iPhone and read the magnified words in English. Michael had posted the article on his Facebook earlier that day. The headline: “To the Mother I Love.” Xinran’s son on the byline; date, today; Huffington Post, "Queer Voices"…
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