Stories tagged vilcek-literature-prize

Snowsuit (from FATHER MUST)

20142014 views99 comments88 favs

“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)

10951095 views00 comments00 favs

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)

17701770 views66 comments44 favs

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)

11401140 views22 comments22 favs

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)

11571157 views00 comments00 favs

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)

14281428 views22 comments22 favs

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)

14371437 views44 comments33 favs

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)

14941494 views33 comments44 favs

“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)

11971197 views22 comments22 favs

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

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

16951695 views00 comments00 favs

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.

15101510 views66 comments55 favs

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)

11031103 views22 comments22 favs

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

Cousin (from The New Yorker)

12251225 views22 comments00 favs

...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)

17911791 views1111 comments44 favs

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)

979979 views00 comments00 favs

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...