In June of this year, writer Tamara Winfrey Harris released The Sisters Are Alright: Changing The Broken Narrative of Black Women in America. According to The Washington Post, Harris writes “specifically of black women, and taking care to avoid conflating the black male experience with the definition of the black experience, period.” In this pivotal cultural moment when black men’s lives are often the focal point of the Black Lives Matter movement, Harris’ work…
I set out to write about the psycho-geographical valence of Laramie. That term was my coinage and I was proud of it. The emotional weight of coming to this haunted, haunting place to study. Weather-torn fences staggering out into the bleak windswept stretches of the prairie, the contemplative hush of the snowfall, the blue sky, the burning stars. Place myself in that landscape and the reflection of that landscape in me. The landscape of Laramie…
Pretty much the best part about England is that they have divided their vocabulary up into U- and non-U aspects of speech, with the net result being that pretty much whatever word you choose to employ in a given situation, you sound like a grasping middle-class grasper and people talk about your graspiness in horrified tones the moment you leave the room. There's a wrong way to refer to the bathroom over there! Imagine…
You can't go in there! Why, no one enters the Forbidden Zone and returns to tell the tale!
You can't go in there! Why, no one goes past the Silent Sentinels without express permission from the Guardian Herself!
You can't go in there! Why, such a thing has not been done by someone of ungentle blood in seventeen generations, since before the Moon was veiled!
Our roots lie in the Hardfought Wastes, but increasingly we find our work applicable across the Lands of the Trackless. Our future, like that of so many others, depends on consistent usage of best practices in every region under the Skyburn. Discontents General notes on distinguishing the Unfettered from the Self-Born Concise articles with snappy intros (future users may have mere seconds to scan through the manual before the redhand descends) Keep your readers in…
If you’d like to help Tall Man and other blood cancer patients, please donate your bone marrow in the country you live in, and if you have money, they’d love you to give it to Anthony Nolan in the UK or to Be the Match in the US.
Parts one and two. "The latter inserted fluid into the former; some of which was absorbed into the softer tissues and membranes, the remainder left to seep back into the open air." "One of them allowed a set of fingers, nails and all, to enter its most vulnerable hollow." "The integrity of both cavities was breached." "The larger of the two thoroughly excavated the other."…
The first time I read Matthew Salesses’ work was five years ago, when we were published together in a (now-defunct) online literary journal, Pindeldyboz. Matt’s flash fiction story, one of several that would eventually form his chapbook collection Our Island of Epidemics, blew me away for its mingling of lyricism, surprise, myth, and human longing. After I reached out to tell him I admired his work, we became friends, and since then I’ve followed his career…
Friend of the Toast Sara Cantor (she's single, ladies) just guest starred in her first-ever music video, describing it to me thusly: a "disco witch sex coven commits femme-on-femme glitter bondage." Reader, I watched it.
All heat waves are emotionally devastating as well as physically uncomfortable, especially in Northern California, where there is no central air conditioning ("No central air conditioning? Surely some public establish –" NO CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING). I can handle the winter, or what we have in the way of it here. I can turn on the heat, or drag my cat onto my lap, or double up on socks. But a heat wave! Friends and lovers, heat waves are spiritually…
“Write me an erotic story about Batman and the Queen of England. Bonus points if you get the Queen’s corgis in there somehow.” “Write me a story about a backpacker whose dying wish is a tiramisu cupcake.” “Write me a meet-cute about Cthulhu and a woman at a bar in the style of Charles Bukowski.” I say yes. Of course I say yes -- I’m the man sitting under the tree with a typewriter. In…
In my third year of law school, I began to remember things I had spent most of my life forgetting. My attention fractured into a thousand glass splinters, each one cutting. I was assailed with strange images. With the images came disconnection, as if I was watching what was in front of me on a screen. Then, incongruously, a pervasive sense of threat, the shadows of my apartment stalking me.
The Toast's literary pilgrimages archive can be found here. When you live across the ocean from where your favourite stories are set, Europe can seem nearly as imaginary as Middle Earth. London and Paris are real, but in my mind they exist as an amalgam of stories. Pure text doesn’t provide the sensory cues of visual media, so it demands that readers participate in creating the world of the story. It’s an intimate act of collaboration, a…
"You've reached Kirk Cameron. Leave me a message. God bless." "[singing] Show me that smile again (Oh, show me that smile) Don't waste another minute on your cryin' We're nowhere near the end (We're nowhere near) The best is ready to begin As long as we got each other We got the world spinnin' right in our hands Baby, you and me We gotta be The luckiest dreamers who never quit dreamin' As long as…
hey babe im gonna be out late tonight dont wait up you'll have to take care of the kids but it should be pretty easy theyre dead so you dont really have to do anything lol MEDEA: Jason babe i love you SO much JASON: ahh i love you too MEDEA: and i'll do everything i can to make sure you complete the tasks my father set before you JASON: ahh…
