Stories tagged vilcek-literature-prize

Snowsuit (from FATHER MUST)

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“I’ve been standing across the street for fifteen minutes. I was walking by and saw you weren’t moving. So I watched—you didn’t move at all.”

Six Quarters (from Grand Street literary journal)

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Yes, my old uncle liked roses. Grew them. He had a way of smelling a rose—after he smelled a rose, you are surprised the rose is still there.

Read Chinese (from The New Yorker)

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Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison—right now that’s all I can say.

Satellite Dish (from The New Yorker)

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Just as one thing I say is “Don’t worry about me,” one thing I think is that you love somebody by living with them...

Father Must (from The New Yorker)

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It might not seem easy to breathe any love into a name like Father. It’s a stiff word—it’s not soft, like, say, Papa—but sometimes you have to breathe love into names you don’t choose.

Quiet (from Grand Street literary journal)

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I know it’s nobody’s fault, and that one thing had nothing to do with the other, because it was this way for me since I was born; they just didn’t figure it out for a while that with one of my ears I could hardly hear, and with the other, I couldn

Jelly Doughnuts (from The New Yorker)

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Simmi's only been in New York three weeks, but the second night she was here Buck took her to a coffee place he knew, and now Simmi makes sure he takes her there every night...

Elevator Neighbors (from The New Yorker)

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“Do you think she paints?” “Her face, a little, But don’t you find her kind of bony?”

Yellow Dining Room (from The New Yorker)

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...you should pick a VERY OLD millionaire. Very old, and NOT VERY WELL...

Carmen (from The New Yorker+ a Jimmy Breslin "afterword" from Newsday)

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Every trip her mother leaves it until then: Shouldn’t she look for an apartment in a better area; shouldn’t she try for a job with some future? “And, you know, someday you could get married, Carmen.”

Me. You. Love.

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In my own case, before Ellen, of course there was someone else. She—well, she was someone who I felt as if I’d always known and always would. And I think she felt the same about me.

Northeast of Eden (Memoir; Editor: Charlotte Curtis)

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Snakes have no eyelids, no hips, no lobby in Washington (some creatures do!) and little support at home.

Cousin (from The New Yorker)

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...to know something people around you don’t know can put you outside of them. And then you can’t get back in...

Though I'm NEVER Drunk, I'm ALWAYS Disorderly (memoir)

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1987. Recently, I told a teenager who was smoking a cigarette in an elevator that he should put it out. “You a cop?” he asked.

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

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It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...