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Reverse-Gentrification of the Literary World

Akashic Books

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News & Features

“Dinner at Omar’s” by Robert Arellano

Ashland, deep summer. It’s the one month the sun sets over steep Lithia Park only one hour earlier than everywhere else in Oregon, but at the jagged edge of town the hulking green shadows still pile up like a forest clear-cut. It’s the lull after Big Al’s Tennis Tournament, and it’s still a long haul ‘til Labor Day . . .

“Like Unlike” by Kristen Valentine

You haven’t seen her in over a year, not since that Labor Day weekend you took her up to your family’s lake house and she got so pissed at you for shooting up right away. “Danny, I was serious,” she said, like you were supposed to know that. But how the hell could you tell she was serious this time when she’d never been serious before . . . ?

“Burnt Ground” by Thomas Mitchell

—Why’d you come? she said.
—The boys were busy, I guess.

I looked around. Her Nana’s house was just how I remembered: another old villa that desperately needed a coat of paint. I tried not to look at her. I could remember how good Tala looked, dressed and undressed . . .