|
The winning entries for the 2008 S.C. Fiction Project.
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
My infant son cries, and Liz looks up from reading the Pottery Barn catalog. Instead of being magnanimous and tending to the child and giving my wife a break from what she's been doing all day, I remain seated, and I think about my girlfriend, Megan. I wonder what she's doing right now. I saw her for a second today. We passed in the hall. We made eye contact, then she looked to the floor. We didn't say anything, but I caught a whiff of her scent — sweet and clean like a bloom. I inhaled and held it as long as I could.
 Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
The annual writing competition, sponsored by The Post and Courier and the South Carolina Arts Commission, calls for previously unpublished short stories of 2,500 words or less.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Captain Mandrake, as he calls himself, strides into the room — a living space, warm, cluttered, three generations' worth of portraiture and bric-a-bric, the only sound the crackling of a dying fire — and proceeds, as he is wont to do, to cause me no shortage of distress: And it is late, and the chill of January has settled over the world. I am reading; I am at a good part. It is my one escape, this.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Hugh stood on the deck in the rain. He held the cell phone to his ear and listened to his neighbor's recorded voice, 'We're swimming right now. Leave a message and we'll call you back.' The rain came in a deluge. He struggled to keep from looking down, instead, mindful of the newly dug foundation below him, he squinted at Sam's place jutting out from the bluff shared by his house. Where hardwood trees once held the soil, streams of water lapped over rows of cinderblocks, slurping mud down the ravine that separated his house from Sam's property.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Brian Ray of Columbia has been named the winner of the inaugural South Carolina First Novel Prize. His novel, "Girl With Her Throat Cut," will be published by the Hub City Writers Project, an award-winning independent press in Spartanburg.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
The guard made beautiful music. Every night around 8 o'clock Patrick would fold himself under the window in his cell and listen to the notes from the Japanese violinist spilling into the Philippine air. Patrick closed his eyes, wove his fingers into the thick tufts of his red hair, and imagined the guard's bow caressing the strings. It was the singular thing of beauty in his prisoner-of-war camp.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Whose turn is it to die? That's what Gladys wondered as she heard the commotion in the hall. Gabriel was on the move. Gladys could hear the nurses scurrying from behind the counter and the hushed whispers of concern. She sighed as she placed her crocheting on the side table and scooted to the front of her rocking chair. She had better go look to make sure he wasn't picking her.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
After trying 10 or so keys in an arsenal of many, the landlord, a fat man who kept a supply of stubby cigars in his shirt pocket, found the right one and pushed open the door to the apartment. "I remember you," he told Daniel. "Your wife, not so much, but you I remember.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Train tracks spread out below the overpass and beyond, back toward South Carolina, tracks forking and forking again. It looked like the genealogy in the family Bible, the one splayed on a table in his parents' front hall. They were stuck in traffic at an overpass in Birmingham. Jonathan wondered if there was an accident ahead, thought about his mother, her body twisted in a roadside ditch. His cousin Matt had called him first. Then his Uncle Herv as he was driving to the hospital.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
For Mikee and me, our last family vacation began in the middle of the night with a zombie walk down the dark hallway to the brightly lit bathroom, followed by the feel of Dad's strong hands lifting us onto the backseat. Then we were moving into the darkness, traveling from Dayton to Myrtle Beach.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Time certainly does fly. It's hard to believe this marks the 25th year the S.C. Fiction Project has showcased the Palmetto State's best writers.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
The South Carolina Arts Commission Literary Arts Bulletin is a free, twice-monthly e-publication designed to provide a coordinated, comprehensive listing of literary events across the state.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Randall Kenan and Pamela Duncan were the judges for the 2008 S.C. Fiction Project.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Carl Jr. always used the extra bathroom, the one all the way in back. The seat was cold, but it was peaceful. He folded the crossword book over on itself, searched for a 4-letter word for scared. Fear. Those were the ones he liked best. The ones his 7-year-old could do. His wife bought him the crossword puzzles, said it would help him with something. She started with Sudoku, but numbers were plain stupid. What was the point?
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
For Alvie, the pain of losing her momma wasn't nearly so bad as the pain that her daddy still lived. This realization came to the girl like a bird falling out of the sky. Pretty summer day, clear blue sky full of possibilities and dreams set flying. Then, out of the blue, like a jaybird that once soared and pecked and played with its friends then fell still and cold at the young girl's feet, feathers only ruffling in the breeze.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Sonny had been instructed to bring nothing but his sticks, and he entered Henderson's Music Store five minutes before 9 o'clock on Saturday morning, holding the sticks in front of him like divining rods. He told the woman at the front desk that he was there for a drum lesson. After telling Sonny his teacher's name, the woman, a pretty, middle-age lady with bright blond hair, shook her head and curled her lip in a disapproving way that Sonny didn't think was meant for him. She directed him through a door at the back of the store. The door led into a short hallway with three more doors on the right side of the hall. Each had a little round window situated at eye-level.
Read More
|
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008
Henry stumbled down the aisle ahead of the twins, two bulky shoulder bags over his left shoulder, another in his left hand. In his right hand, he carried his wife's overstuffed red suitcase, bumping the sides of the seats as he passed and waking sleeping travelers who glanced up with both indifference and irritation before closing their eyes and going back to sleep.
Read More
|
|
 Latest Local Headlines
More South Carolina Headlines
|
