LitMag Wave: Willow Springs

Willow Springs No. 58 (Fall 2006) is not the most recent issue, but it’s the one I’ve got. I enjoyed much of it, including a piece by Sherman Alexie (“My Encounters with the Homeless People of the Pacific Northwest”), which is listed as nonfiction but reads very much like Alexie’s fiction. There’s also a nice short story by Robert Lopez, “Vaya con Huevos” (which would be translated “Go with Eggs”) about a man who isn’t altogether there. I also liked Jess Walter’s “Sex Talk” about a boy who has an awkward relationship with his father.

But the reason I even have the issue is that it includes David James Poissant’s “Between the Teeth,” a story that I heard him read at Sewanee last summer. For my reading I had tentatively planned to read from “Stonewall,” my story from last year’s Confluence about a dead dog. But when Jamie read this story, about a dead dog, it seemed to trigger a series of dead dog readings and by the time it was my turn I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I remember that I was sitting behind Mary Flynn, editor of Blackbird, and I said “I thought you couldn’t get a dead dog story published?” She turned around and said, “You can’t in my magazine.” Obviously Jamie did, and so did I, but I ended up reading something else.

Also in this issue is a very interesting interview with Marilynne Robinson, which you can download.

Next up: One Story