Fra Angelico Makes Two Cappuccinos for Mark Rothko The Great Artistic Studio in the Sky, where our story takes place, is a spacious area with all the clear northern light that any artist could want. It is conveniently located in an area that has all the amenities of midtown Manhattan such as delis and coffee…
Welcome to Saint Angel, William Luvaas’s third novel (Anaphora Literary Press, March 2018), chronicles a small enclave of California nation during a severe drought. I met with William Luvaas recently in Pasadena to discuss his new novel while the SoCal fires raged nearby. Welcome to Saint Angel is the story of a loose-knit…
When Leo gets in the car, the clock moves back an hour. “See?” Mom says. “I told you guys.” But we aren’t convinced. I’ve seen this happen this summer, sure. But I figure there has to be some sort of scientific explanation. I believe in science, and the internet, and evolution. I think if all…
My friend Katie is a psychic and cryptozoologist. As a cryptozoologist, she doesn’t stalk the typical variety of elusive, randomly sighted, unverified cryptids—your Sasquatch or Nellie or Jersey Devil. No, her quarry is far more ethereal, and apparently much tinier. They don’t inhabit deep woods or unfathomable lakes, but rather commonplace neighborhoods, typically…
Blue Blue pastel and Kodachrome clouds. Sunlight streams from the shoebox. Empty and cracked, Nikon and Kodak, plastic canisters rattle on the ground, bouncing off the hardwood. The photographs are neatly stacked. Dust fills the spaces in between. Martin looks at himself in dynamic Polaroid light. He wonders how many flashbulbs were wasted trying to…
Clive swept his hand through the dried delta bed, rubbing a few specks of rusting rock between his gloved fingers. He looked out at the Mighty Dust Mites—as he liked to call the solar-powered robots—which speckled the planet for miles. When, in an effort to save their dying program, NASA’s engineers discovered they could…
Rock and roll therapy crashes in waves against her eardrums. The sound changes color. Her mind is lacquered purple and the room is full of smoke. Listless clouds bounce from couch to couch and hot cirrus strands dance towards the ceiling. It’s been two years since college. Brian is sitting on the red loveseat. He’s…
It’s my birthday when he brings the piñata and the police pull up his driveway. Candy falls. Sweet rumor litters backyards. Hushed tones hop fences. Speculation bikes on wide asphalt. For Sale waves from the porch, punctuating stage center in our living room window. We wave back. The still dialogue inundates cul-de-sacs. Quietude springs forth…
Tengo knew quite well that Japan might drown in the next couple of days. It had been the only thing on the news for the past week; just off the Southern Pacific shore, the Tropical Storm Babe was cooking into the most threatening typhoon to reach Japan in 18 years. Anyone who could leave the…
(A forty watt moon. A throat wrapped with the slow turn of smoke. Her head tilted towards the window. Every night these three things. We were only the angle of nouns… And she is always covered in dusk, I swear it. And I have always been a man with a chest full of hummingbirds,…
Congrats—you've stumbled upon the fiction writing section of FORTH, a premiere online literary magazine. David Foster Wallace said, "Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable," and in a thousand words or less, that's what we provide here at FORTH. Our fiction wing is a place to escape for two to five minutes at a time, in between the rest of your Internet musings. FORTH's fiction section draws writers from all over the globe and has helped established FORTH as one of the best online literary magazines. Our literary magazine is an interactive platform designed for the modern reader, focused on highlighting only the most engaging fiction writing from emerging and established artists, while providing our readers insight into the creative processes of short fiction and novel writing. Each month, we offer interviews and excerpts from both well-known and up-and-coming novelists, flash fiction writers, and short story tellers. Los Angeles has been the hub of many (in)famous fiction writers and literary geniuses, and we at FORTH are pleased to herald the next class of poets & writers, while reinvigorating the tradition of Los Angeles-curated literature.
