Tag: short story

I Give Up in Mumber Mag

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Publication, short storyLeave a comment

My flash “I Give Up” is now available in the second issue of Mumber Mag! I’m grateful to the editor Harry Leeds for his thoughtful comments on this piece, helping to make it less wordy and amplifying the sense of movement and breathlessness with which its overwhelmed speaker addresses the world.

The next crayon hit him right between the eyes. The next two hit the windshield and the car swerved, coming dangerously close to a refrigerator truck. My husband screamed.

In response, the two-year old started screaming.

https://www.mumbermag.me/2020/12/28/i-give-up/

The Mumber Two (OMG that title) is a delightful issue all around, worth reading cover-to-cover!

No Horse Required published in CALYX

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Publication, short storyLeave a comment

So proud to have a story in the current issue of CALYX. I wrote the first draft of “No Horse Required” in August 2008, that’s 12 years ago! Two years ago, the editors of this magazine requested edits, and one year ago, they accepted it for publication. A version of this story appeared in my 2010 Russian-language collection. For context, the story opens in 1992, and altogether it’s been quite a journey!

When I was thirteen years old, I yearned for a passionate and committed friendship modeled after the books I was reading. Never mind that I was a girl and that, in these books, friendship was reserved for a particular relationship between boys and men. These books were standard fodder for earnest Soviet children, complemented by selections from the international library: The Three Musketeers, Ivanhoe, The Pathfinder. I searched for blood friends, for true soul mates among my classmates, but the boys preferred computer games and the girls wanted to watch American movies.

https://www.calyxpress.org/shop/vol-321/

The issues are available on sale through the mag’s website. I have a few copies, DM me if you want one.

“How to Survive Shabbat Dinner,” a new story

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Publication, short storyLeave a comment

My story “How to Survive Shabbat Dinner” appears in 580 Split, an issue subtitled “Message Undeliverable.” Read it here!

Spatzi escaped from East Berlin two weeks before the wall came down. This has been the grounding irony of her life. It’s nearly thirty years later, and she lives in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the world, and drives a ridesharing car. Her favorite windshell jacket has turned from brown to puke-green from sun exposure. But hey, it now better matches the upholstery of the car seats.

Once in awhile she thinks about moving back to Berlin.

https://580split.org/#howtosurviveshabbatdinner

An interview on The Other Stories podcast

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn book, Like Water, PublicationLeave a comment

A week ago, I had a chance to talk to Ilana Masad, a writer and a podcast host at The Other Stories. She asked me to read two stories from my forthcoming collection, LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES, and then we talked about the stories, the book, and a bit about my coming to writing.

“We Were Geniuses,” one of the two stories from the podcast, is an older story and had been first published in The Provo Canyon Review, a beautiful online journal started by my Narrative Magazine colleague Chris McClelland–Chris moved on to other things, and the magazine is now unfortunately defunct. I love seeing this story back online, together with “Sweet Porridge,” another piece from the middle of the book.

Read the stories and listen to the podcast here!

Bananas for Sale

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Like Water, Publication, short storyLeave a comment

One of the stories from my upcoming collection Like Water has been published in Scoundrel Time, an online literary magazine that began as a reaction to forces that attempt to fracture civil society. Here’s the extract from this piece:

The bananas were rotting on the factory floor outside of St. Petersburg. In early October, the temperature inside the nearly abandoned building held at just above freezing, too cold for the tropical fruit. Banana skins were greying, developing dark spots. They would survive just another week.


Three metric tons of neatly packed boxes, colorfully labeled and perforated with holes so that the fruit could breathe, towered on both sides of the assembly line. Until the previous winter, the factory manufactured sixty-three tractors a day; then production stopped. The bananas were a new venture of the young would-be acting director…

Read the rest of the story here.

Companionship short listed for Brilliant Short Fiction Award

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn prize, Publication, short story, UncategorizedLeave a comment

My flash fiction “Companionship,” which  won the Litquake contest last year, was short listed for “Wow Us” contest by Brilliant Flash Fiction. The magazine published it on their website here. Scroll down to read my story that begins with this:

At three years old Michael did decide to return to his mother’s stomach. His mother shifted things around and made room under her heart. . . .

Helen More’s Suicide in Feminist Studies

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Publication, short story, UncategorizedLeave a comment

44-1_cover_homepageMy story “Helen More’s Suicide” has been published in the current issue of Feminist Studies and is available on JSTOR. The piece was originally inspired by the biography of Carolyn Gold Heilbrun, a scholar and a feminist who wrote mystery novels under pseudonym Amanda Cross, though in drafts the association became very loose.

Here’s the beginning of the story:

My retired colleague Marguerite called to tell me of Helen More’s suicide. “Of all the sad, ludicrous things people do to themselves!”

She invited me over. “Thursday night, as usual. I could use the company of younger people.”

It had been about a year since I’d first been invited to these Thursdays—monthly literary and musical soirees Marguerite hosted in her living room. Helen had been a regular at Marguerite’s for several decades; the two women were close contemporaries and each a celebrity in her own field. Helen was scholar of the English Romantics at the same university where Marguerite had taught Flaubert, Zola, and Balzac, and where I was now a junior faculty member in the English department. I’d heard of Professor More long before I met her: she lectured at the university from the 1960s until being forced into retirement in 2006 ostensibly
due to age. She had a reputation as a militant feminist who eagerly engaged in battles about appointments and promotions, and her politics could have had something to do with it.

To read the rest, log in via your library (through JSTOR) or buy a copy here.

Doctor Sveta in Alaska Quarterly Review

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Publication, short story, Uncategorized6 Comments

I’m deaqr_vol34-web-439x662lighted to have a short story of mine, “Doctor Sveta,” in the current issue of Alaska Quarterly Review. Here’s the opening,

Doctor Sveta was twenty six years old when the Navy commissariat summoned her to Leningrad and put her on a cargo ship among a motley crew of agronomists, agricultural engineers, livestock breeders, and tractor drivers, none of whom knew where the ship was headed or how long the journey might take. Her fellow passengers looked as confused at finding themselves confined to a seafaring vehicle as Doctor Sveta felt. No tractors accompanied them; not a cow, not even a single chicken. The agronomists and tractor drivers were healthy young men and a few women, two of them visibly pregnant. Doctor Sveta had been trained as a surgeon in Leningrad; she assumed it was in this capacity she’d been recalled from her post at a hospital in Minsk, Belarus. Besides the ship’s medic, there were no doctors aboard and not even a basic medical facility. Doctor Sveta worried she’d have to embrace a crash course in obstetrics.

Half a century later, as she tells me this story, Doctor Sveta . . .

This is a print magazine. To read the story, please buy the issue.

Martian Federation’s General Consulate in San Francisco: FAQ for Citizens

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Publication, short story, UncategorizedLeave a comment

nrm-first-issueHere’s an experimental short, recently published in a brand new magazine. Welcome, New Reader Review! Download the copy of the magazine with my story here. (My story begins on page 204).

Martian Federation’s General Consulate in San Francisco: FAQ for Citizens

I. General Questions.
1.1. What is a consular district? I currently reside in Utah. May I seek assistance from the consulate in San Francisco?
1.2. Why am I unable to reach the consulate by phone?

II. Passport of the Martian Federation.
2.1. Must I apply for my passport in person? May I apply for my Martian passport by
mail?
2.2. How long does it take to receive my Martian passport?
2.3. What are the advantages of carrying a biometric passport?
2.4. I have bad handwriting. May I apply for my Martian passport electronically?
2.8. My name has been poorly translated to Martian. What do I do?
2.6. I don’t have a Martian passport. May I enter Mars with my American passport?
2.7. I was born on Mars but have lived in Utah my entire life. I don’t know the Martianlanguage. May I fill out the application for my Martian passport in English?

IV. Registration of Legal Documents.
4.1. Will the consulate register a marriage between an American and a Martian?
4.4. My groom has a very demanding job and is very busy. We are unable to come in
person to the consulate in San Francisco to register our marriage. What do we do?

To continue reading, download the issue.