Ian MacAllen

At the southern border of the United States, the Trump administration continues to commit various crimes against humanity. The optimistic among us hope Trump and his team eventually suffer a comeuppance. For the families experiencing it, revenge fantasies likely do little to attenuate the trauma. Their oppression remains ongoing and unabated.
Our immigration crisis creeps into the life of the unnamed protagonist in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive. Like most of us in a place of relati...

Friendr
The first orientation video promises that the Friendr app can provide a fulfilling experience for both the client and the associate. I was not looking for a fulfilling experience. I just needed the money.
The second orientation video warns against specific behaviors for associates: no touching, no sexual contact, and absolutely no circumventing the app when arranging a Friend Encounter. The video consists of colorful animations reducing these rules into childish cartoons narrated by a...

The metaphor hidden in the Garden of Eden fable is that ignorance is a blissful paradise, while eating from the tree of knowledge exposes us to the miserable rot of existence. Adam and Eve’s journey of self-discovery occupies Jo, the narrator of Paradise Rot, the debut novel by Norwegian musician Jenny Hval. A first-year student, Jo arrives in a foreign, English-speaking university town, bemused and wide-eyed, eager but vulnerable. By the time she departs, her experiences have hardened her.
T...

THE coup began just after 1:00 p.m., local time, while we passed obliviously overhead. I was on my third sunrise. Five hours would elapse before I heard anything. There had been no tanks, only bank clerks who drained the President’s accounts. There were no warplanes or missiles, only television airwaves controlled with a flipped switch. There had been no assassins; the rebels simply took control of the president’s social media, his website, his email address. The whole thing ended before anyone could tweet it. By then, the president was as tame as a LOLcat, sanitized for t-shirts sold at Urban

The birth of a first child is a seminal moment. Parents prepare as best they can, but the challenges of newborn can destabilize even the most committed partners. Even in the best conditions, maintaining a relationship doesn’t always work, and nothing will prepare a new parent for the death of their infant.
In calamity, people seek solace in identifying some tiny error they’ve made as though by acknowledging it, they can correct the damage wrought. Correcting the mistake doesn’t always work, b...

I met Chelsea at a book launch party when Lauren Cerand, the publicist, introduced us. I recognized her name from literary events around New York City, but hadn’t heard her read. She promised to send me a copy of her forthcoming book, Tonight I’m Someone Else, and a few days later it appeared in my mailbox.

I began reading the collection with curiosity. My first reaction was how she had captured a certain kind of melancholy. Throughout the essays, we see a constant struggle to fit in, like wh...

Kate Braverman’s latest story collection, A Good Day For Seppuku, out now from City Lights, offers eight precisely written stories examining the commonplace struggles of modern upper-middle class life. Divorce, substance abuse, and social expectation plagues an assorted cast with narratives that develop slowly, in careful and considerate ways that often uncover their sadness or loneliness.
The characters populating these stories are wealthy and privileged. They discuss plastic surgery like it...

Joe Meno’s Star Witness is an enchanting mystery that meanders through the lives of a motley cast of eccentrics trapped in their rural lives.

Meno, author of novels like Office Girl and Marvel and A Wonder, launched the episodic serial novella through Electric Literature. Serialized fiction published by periodicals is not a new format, but this modern iteration feels innovative and unexpected, and Electric Literature should be lauded for experimenting. Meno does the genre proud with an alluri...

The Times has been a dominant force at family holidays for years. The new guidelines underscore our appreciation that journalists are humans and have families, but also call for our journalists to recognize that as their employer, we have a right to meddle in their private lives. We believe that to remain the world’s best news organization, we must allow journalists time with these human families. The guidelines were developed in a collaborative way with our legal and human resources departme...

TOUCH by Courtney Maum

NAMES ARE ALWAYS THE FIRST LOCK ON ANY CAGE: TALKING WITH DOLAN MORGAN

Culdesac By Robert Repino

Ian MacAllen (@IanMacAllen) | Twitter

Joyland Magazine | Los Angeles | Tourists

Nicotine by Nell Zink