Page 13 | Harper's Magazine

Byzantium: Stories

Ben Stroud on getting to know a character, the balance between research and imagination, and the writer’s desire for recognition

The Exiled Queen

by László Krasznahorkai,Translated by Ottilie Mulzet,

By László Krasznahorkai, from Seiobo There Below, published last month by New Directions. Krasznahorkai was born in Hungary in 1954. Translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet. He already knew…

The Way Things Are Going

by Lynn Freed,

Gwen was the one who had insisted that Ma and I move to America. Sooner or later, she’d said, it would happen again, it was only a matter of time.…

Outside T-Club

by Caleb Crain,

By Caleb Crain, from Necessary Errors, to be published next month by Penguin. According to the pages on Eastern Europe that he had torn from a guide to gay life…

May I Touch Your Hair?

by Julie Hecht,

A special family lived around the corner from us at our beach house. How were they special? There were three children when most other families had two children. As a…

Savage Coast

by Kyle Paoletta,

Rowena Kennedy-Epstein on Muriel Rukeyser’s political and emotional vision

Living Deluxe

by Diane Williams,

By Diane Williams, from a collection in progress. Williams’s most recent book is Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty. True! Yes! Mother always gave me a tribute with a sigh. I…

East Texas Lumber

by Ben Stroud,

Back from lunch, I stood in the early June sun pulling two-by-sixes for somebody else’s load when Mike, the yard manager, came out of the office and yelled, “All right,…

Harper’s Magazine Wins National Magazine Award for Fiction

by Harper’s Magazine,

Last night, Harper's won the National Magazine Award for fiction, for Stephen King's story “Batman and Robin Have an Altercation” (September 2012).

Case Study (c. 1904)

by Joshua Cohen,

By Joshua Cohen, from Attention! A (Short) History, published this month in the United Kingdom by Notting Hill Editions. Cohen, a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, is the author, most…

The Gift

by Mary Ruefle,

By Mary Ruefle, from Issue 2 of Unstuck. Ruefle is the author of several books, including, most recently, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures. The day the living room flooded…

Fiction

From the Archive

Got it! Thanks for signing up!