Short Story Month Contest

Today is the last day to enter our Short Story Month contest, so I'm bumping up the original post with all the contest details. Don't miss out. Enter today!

May is Short Story Month and we are eager to celebrate it. One thing we are going to do this year is hold a SSM contest. We want to hear from you, our readers, about your favorite short stories from Ninth Letter. Simply leave a comment in this post telling us which Ninth Letter story is your favorite and why. We will share your thoughts here on the blog. But wait, there's more. Telling us about your favorite 9L story also enters you into our drawing for 9L prize packs!

Prize pack 1: a 9L t-shirt and a 1-year subscription

Prize pack 2: a 9L bandana and 2-year subscription

So, yes, there will be two winners chosen by a random drawing! Start posting about your favorite 9L stories today and the winners will be chosen at the end of the month.

Also, like we did for National Poetry Month, we are going back into our archives to post some of our favorite 9L stories. Those posts can be found below. Enjoy!

Short Story Month - Paint

There are just a few days left in Short Story Month, so I'm glad that our next featured story is one of my favorites, "Paint" by Whit Coppedge from our Spring/Summer 2010 (vol. 7, no. 1) issue.

Paint

Paint, the young man, is thin. "You'll blow away," he's told, sail that he is.

Out her back window, a neighbor woman, Ribeiro, sees the ring of teenage boys, more young men, circle around him. As if they sense her watching, they leave, setting Paint on his now-unmolested way home, along the worn path following the creek behind her house, a short cut to the sidewalks of his neighborhood.

"I wonder if you could help me with something," she asks him the next day as he passes along the path, a day when he's not stopped and bothered. "My car keys have fallen back behind the refrigerator. Can you see if you can grab them for me?"

He is happy to oblige and slides between the white panel and the counter, snaking his arm around the corner and hooking the ring with his finger. For his help, he gets a peck on the cheek.

Read the rest of "Paint" here, and don't forget to enter our Short Story Month Contest, either here, on Facebook, or on Twitter! Visit our webstore to pick up a copy of vol. 7, no. 1.

Short Story Month - Rachel Cantor

Our latest feature for Short Story Month is the excellent "Zanzibar, Bereft," by the always excellent Rachel Cantor, originally published in volume 3, no. 2. A new story by Rachel, featuring Shira, the narrator of "Zanzibar, Bereft," is forthcoming very soon in the next issue of Kenyon Review.

Zanzibar, Bereft

Delhi, 1991. You don’t go there. You don’t go to the Hotel Bel Air (named for the owner’s ’62 bubbletop, baby blue, photo pasted behind reception). A hotel recommended by your Air India stewardess, whom you trusted because of the bindi on her forehead. But no, it’s not a hotel, it’s a hostel, a hovel, really, catering to itinerant carpet dealers, Kashmiris who knock on your door, who knock and knock and knock, and unfurl carpets with well-practiced flicks of the wrist when finally, bleary-eyed, you open your door, the most beautiful carpets in all of India, pure silick, would you like to see another? You’re dismayed, in disarray, it’s been days since you’ve slept, but still they offer you tea, send for it when you say, No, no tea, inquire, What is your good name, where are your husband, your children, chuckle when you say you are poor, for no white woman is ever truly poor. You put a sign on your door—I hate Kashmiri carpets, I will never buy a Kashmiri carpet—and fall asleep only to be awakened by a rat skittering across your chest, forcing you to disturb management, in the form of a sleepy desk clerk named Raj. Show me, Raj says, show me where a rat could possibly have entered your room and surely I will give you another.

Room, he means, not rat.

You don’t go to Delhi. You don’t go to a poetry reading to escape the Hotel Bell Air, you don’t meet Ravi Singh, you are not seduced by his dark eyes, the taste of chai on his tongue.

Read the rest of "Zanzibar, Bereft" here, and don't forget to enter our Short Story Month Contest, either here, on Facebook, or on Twitter!

Short Story Month - Keith Lee Morris

Next up for Short Story Month, we have Keith Lee Morris, one of our favorite authors and people, with his story from our Fall/Winter 05 (vol. 2, no. 2) issue.

Listen While I Speak

We were at the doctor's, Tip and I, to see about getting me off the Pill and getting him a vasectomy.

But the room was more comfortable than our doctor's office, with a hanging fern in one corner and framed prints of flowers on the wall and a nice, airy smell instead of that awful antiseptic one that gets right into your breathing.

I was lying on a table and Tip was on one side of me and on the other side was an ultrasound machine with the glowing screen and the jelly on my stomach with the doctor running the pointer over me. It was my obstetrician, I saw then, from when Scott and Brennan were born, not our usual doctor, but I didn't tell him that I wasn't pregnant.

You can read the rest of the story here. Don't forget to enter our Short Story Month Contest. Winners of the 9L prize packs will be announced at the end of the month.