“The Yellow Dress” by Christopher Miguel Flakus

It had been two years since I had a drink, and life was looking up. I was in Cuernavaca, Mexico, taking care of my grandfather. . .

“Last Tango in Sinaloa” by Howard Gimple

Jay sat cross-legged under a cobia tree, the majestic Mayan tree of life, where the gods hung out to keep an eye on their minions below . . .

“Ice Hockey a la mexicana” by Joseph M. Towle

I am a professor of Latin American Literatures and Cultures and a die-hard hockey fan. I am interested in cultural productions and representations from across Latin America. At the same time, I identify most closely with a piece of my local culture: playing a pickup hockey game outside, shoveling snow off the playing surface—often a flooded playground or baseball field—under the floodlights, in seven-degree weather . . .

Kaylie Jones: On Writing The Anger Meridian

To celebrate the release of The Anger Meridian, we’re pleased to feature a statement from author Kaylie Jones on creating an unreliable narrator who’s forced to make a life-altering decision.

“Dead Picture Brides” by Kurt McGill

Night must fall in the Tolerance Zone, the same way it does everywhere. Tonight it fell hard. I watched the shipping crate in the bed of the Escalade pickup parked behind the cantina, the crate filled with the ripe kumquats—three snuffed picture brides—that Yee Chung Toy had tried to smuggle from Fujian Province to Veracruz, and then across Mexico, through Ensenada, and into San Francisco . . .

Don Waters: On Sunland and the US/Mexico Border

Several years ago I lived in Las Cruces, New Mexico, forty miles from Ciudad Juárez, which at the time was the most dangerous city on the planet. I was in the middle of writing my novel, Sunland, and took long drives whenever I needed to think . . .

“The Killing Type,” by Maggie Estep

The sun wasn’t thinking about rising yet. Neither was Lincoln, the guy I had come to Cancun with.

I’d really like to take you to Cancun, baby, he’d said two weeks earlier, on our third date.

I laughed.

“What’s funny about that?”

I pictured high-rise resort buildings choking coastline. Portly Americans choking resort buildings. Me choking Lincoln.

“Nothing,” I said.