by Austin Smith April 5–12

It is hard to say what Austin Smith does so well in his stories but the trick seems to be no trick at all. He gives himself over wholly to the creative processes—that's obvious—but also to the imperfect process of human experience: discovery, pain, pleasure. Smith creates a world like our own—real, flawed—and allows himself to love it, to care for the characters without diminishing them, to honor their difficulties without glorifying them. His prose pampers the reader in its mastery of aesthetic, but also feels picked out of ordinary conversation. Reading his stories means one is captivated while in the midst of the text, and days later, still moved by its dimensions.

Smith is an award-winning poet and current Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction.

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by Jonathan Nathan April 12–19

How much lives on just one street in one city of the world? When Jonathan Nathan hears gun shots, his mind divides the possibilities between where he is from (Kansas), and where he lives now (San Francisco), multiplies a number of external factors (hunting, street violence), and subtracts from the equation qualifiers (good, bad). Instead, we are offered a close-up of Turk Street, its halves and sections and family units, its long shadows and tenuous lives.

For a horrible moment, I thought no one was coming, but then they all showed up. Notepads. Coffee cups. Everyone wearing the same blazers and slacks and sport coats and blouses. All pursed lips and feigned earnestness. There is a practiced air of serenity about modern reporters. They know that the pretense of authentic interest makes the interview go better and gets the subject to open up about 90% of the time. When Chuck Nevius, one of the more widely-read columnists in the San Francisco Chronicle, interviewed me about what happened, I kept it cold, hard, fact-based.

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by Jonathan Nathan April 19–26

Back in Kansas, a fire rages and in San Francisco, the Turk Street Campaign is underway. The country and city have never seemed more disparate or similar in their danger and deliverance.

A country life is, in some ways, an imperiled one. I've been on the road, driving, more than once, with a visible tornado on the ground close enough for me to see, and I'm not the only person I know who has. Living almost anywhere is deadly, in ways we eventually learn to overlook. The block is no exception. Folks around here take in stride "Five-oh! Five-oh!," the warning that police are coming, the way folks back home casually brush off the tornado watches that go out seemingly every summer night.

This is the second in the series from Jonathan Nathan "Bottom of the Street" about the Tenderloin District of San Francisco.

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by Lee Briar Apr 29 – May 3

Bunny and Marie were married for 19 years, 6,845 days before anything started to head south. A few weeks later, Bunny Gold is dragged out of the steam room of Malibu Heights Country Club, forced to dress hastily, and handcuffed in a most severe manner. They'd had a happy life, blessed with more comforts and companionship than any couple might reasonably expect. But something had changed in the ultimate season of their marriage, in the final 10 minutes, and in the moment before Marie found herself eyes-down, nose-to-carpet, mouth-bleeding on the Persian rug.

To build a life together took 20 years. To take it apart happened in no time at all. Marie is dead. And Albert "Bunny" Gold is the prime —and only—suspect. Three witnesses have come forward to tell their version of events. June, Dickey, and Jenna Gold, who each saw their mother in her final moments, and have a version of events to tell that while mismatching, offer a glimpse of a whole life and death.

Lee Briar writes a story of murder and mystery that is as much about the brutality of crime as that of the ticking clock. She is writing a collection of stories to be published in 2014.

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