While we cherish all the stories and articles we are profoundly grateful to publish each year at Across The Margin, we are thrilled to present a look at some of our favorites of the year, and an excerpt from each to wet your whistle…
“The Trial Penalty” by Audrey Levitan
“The U.S. criminal justice system is often capricious, corrupt, and without accountability.” An essay which examines the faults of The Trial Penalty…
“The truth, however, is quite different. A trial by jury is no longer a right to be taken for granted. According to a report by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), the sixth amendment right to a trial is no longer guaranteed. Instead, due to tough on crime policies in the 1980s, and strict zero-tolerance drug and violence policies, for many defendants it started to make sense to take a plea bargain — which are now the manner in which most cases are resolved, including people who are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused. In the mid-1980s, 15 to 20 percent of all cases went to trial. Today that number is three percent. Of the more than 300 people proven factually innocent by the Innocence Project, ten percent pled guilty.”
“A Prayer for Lana Del Rey” by Lily Herman
An essay inspired by the auto-fictitious nature of Lana Del Rey’s work, and the violence sometimes enacted by placing too deep a faith in a persona…
“When I drive to and from the top of this ridge every day, I practice singing along with Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! I am thirty-three, with a birthday approaching in a few weeks, and I’ve been a widow for just over five years. My voice sounds really bad in the morning and a little less bad by evening. I was most certainly invited to this artist residency for writing, not singing. Whenever I sing along with Lana, I have to scratch at the notes above my range and dig for the ones below, but I have a baseless confidence which kicks in when the sun is setting, and which I convince myself covers all manner of musical sins. In the mornings, too, the exhaust system on my car is leaking water, leaving a trail below and behind it, which I am desperately hoping is just condensation, something to do with the altitude and the cool nights. Hoping that all our pipes just need the afternoon sun to warm them up.”
“A Pure Acetylene Virgin Attended by Roses” by Angela Patera
“The beautiful die young and leave the ugly to their ugly lives.” A story, set against the bleak concrete jungle of mid-1990’s Athens, Greece, that confronts the brutal reality of domestic violence and the intense longing many have for a place to call home…
“Athens in August was a suffocating beast. The sky hung heavy and stagnant, choking the life from the city’s concrete jungle. Each breath felt like a furnace blast, leaving a burning fog in my chest and a film of nauseating sweat clinging to my skin. “Earthquake weather,” Grandpa used to call it, his eyes scanning the horizon for tremors only he could sense. Though I never really understood Grandpa’s celestine prophecies, I always took his word to heart. “Let’s hope there’s no earthquake today,” I added. Balancing a dog-eared copy of Enid Blyton’s “First Term at Malory Towers” on my knees, I took the first, triumphant lick of a vibrantly colored — and otherwise forbidden — popsicle, its sugary sweetness a burst of colorful rebellion against the oppressive air.”
“The Year(s) of Living Dangerously” by Jim Genia
A foray into the lawless period of time when cagefighting was legal yet completely unregulated in New York State…
“We were supposed to know better, know better than to patronize fights where safety standards and protocols were an afterthought. Where, due to the law of averages, it seemed inevitable someone would die. But who among us isn’t captivated by the carnage of car crashes, driving slowly by to catch a glimpse of something twisted and broken? That’s us. All of us. The wretched spectators, the wicked transfixed, hungry for blood and broken bones and—heaven forbid—the fatality we hoped to never see but knew there was a good chance we would.
If we took the 6 train to a high school gymnasium in the Bronx, would an untrained and ineffectual referee let a fighter take 27 punches too many in a wholly unnecessary beating?”
“Lithium is the New Gold” by Francesca Spiegel
An illuminating work of fiction inspired by Bombay Beach, a once a popular getaway destroyed by the draining and increasing salinity of the Salton Sea…
“Joe Fisher, a painter and formerly stressed-out city dweller, was looking for a place where he could “let it all go,” a home away from home. He stumbled upon a satellite of Mars, called Bombay Beach, California. Right away, he traded in a few of his paintings and $5,000.00 in cash for a trailer and a sliver of Martian land. There were 215 other people living in Bombay Beach when he got there, and that was just the beginning.”
“On Pen Names: An Aspiring Writer’s Pursuit of Anonymity” by Miranda Jensen
“The prospect of becoming an influencer to promote my work feels like a betrayal of the language that represents me and this storytelling struggle.” An aspiring writer contemplates the pursuit of anonymity in an industry built on just the opposite…
“I’m a writer — or so I tell myself.
When one teeters in the unflattering limbo between drafts and publications, seemingly innocent titles like “writer” come off as idealistic. Can I — who has only paid to write within the confines of the infamous MFA, but has never been paid to write — identify with the writing profession? My friends also struggle with these semantics in their professions: Are line chefs, chefs? Research assistants, researchers? Substitute teachers, teachers? We twenty-somethings often dish out occupation titles, whether bold or unassuming, depending on our audience. Given that readers of Across the Margin, unlike my parents, are likely cautious with literary affirmations, allow me to rephrase my introduction.
I’m an aspiring writer — freshly graduated and utterly unpublished.
“How Did I Wind Up Here?” by Alan Swyer
Reflecting on an enduring relationship with a benevolent French family, a skeptic comes to ponder a possible order, or meaning, to things amid the magic of The City of Lights…
“While all my new table mates proved to be charming, it was Marie-Christine who dazzled me. Though I was excited to learn that she had spent June, July, and August doing summer stock in New England — an experience that convinced her acting was not the profession for her — it was something else that made me even happier. Instead of being a romantic interest, the older man who had seen Marie-Christine off was her stepfather, a Paris-based American who had been in New York on business.
When queried by Marie-Christine about why I was Paris-bound, I explained that after two years of college I had managed to talk my way into writing the Paris section of a travel guide for the youth market to be published by Simon & Schuster. In addition to having a mandate to do everything imaginable, plus a modest expense account, I further justified my adventure by arranging to enroll at the Sorbonne.”
“The Jealous Muse” by Arthur Hoyle
Presenting in its entirety, The Jealous Muse by Arthur Hoyle…
Introduction : The Muse Calls
“Art exerts a strong pull on the human spirit. A 2005 survey conducted by the US Census Bureau found that there are approximately two million Americans who declare their occupation as “artist.” They represent 1.4% of the US labor force, and about .7% of the total population. While this may seem like a small number, the surprising fact is that artists are a larger group of workers than members of the legal profession, or medical doctors, or agricultural laborers. And because tens of millions more Americans consume the goods and services that artists produce, they make an important contribution to both the economy and the cultural life of many communities across the country. Because artists entertain and enlighten us, they are highly regarded.
Yet the majority of artists—actors, dancers, musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, photographers—earn from their art an income that places them near or below the poverty level. Although better educated than most other members of the workforce, they earn less and are underemployed. One-third of all artists work only part of the year, actors and dancers being the least employed. Despite these grim statistics, the number of artists as a percentage of the work force has remained constant for over a decade. While a tiny minority of artists earn astronomical sums of money performing, selling fine art to wealthy collectors and museums, or publishing bestselling books, all the while gaining fame and celebrity for their success, the vast majority of artists labor in obscurity, needing secondary employment or support from others to survive, scrounging for grants, never even setting foot on the ladder to success. Why do they do it?”‘
“Split” by Sara White
“It’s Hollywood’s best kept secret, and a defense mechanism, of sorts.” A short story in which it is revealed how celebrities truly deal with the pressures of fame…
“Rick wasn’t a bad guy. Really, he wasn’t. But scrolling through headline after headline of pop culture writers digging up everything bad he had ever done in his life sure made him seem that way. That was their job, he knew, but he still hated them for it. And you could publish anything these days. Some PA he’d had a fling with years ago put out a tell-all substack about their time together. There had been an age difference, sure, but she had been 22, it was legal and he had real feelings for her at first. But that’s how flings were, it wasn’t his fault she got too attached.
Then there were the interviews with anonymous crew members and others who worked on his sets saying he threw temper tantrums when he got direction he didn’t like. He was a grown man, he didn’t throw temper tantrums. Everyone who had worked with him wanted to cash in on his humiliation, getting money for saying nasty things to make him look bad. He put the phone down.”
“SAP” by Danny Anderson
“I was already beginning to regret this career move. As if going from nothing at all to something crummy was a move” A short story that explores the altruistic oddities of public television…
‘”One thing you’ll have to worry about is the phone. That’s all on you after five.” Stanley said this with some bitterness. I could tell it was a sore spot for the engineers.
“Who’s gonna call after five?” I asked.
“Kooks. Idiots. Rich pricks. You know.” Stanley waved me off. “Look, I’m sixty and I’m sick of this place. You’ll see soon enough.” He was bitter enough to say the quiet part out loud.”
“Gloves Off” by Arvilla Fee
A work of fiction wherein revenge is a dish best served — fried…
“I look about the room, my eyes lighting upon his most treasured possession. The boxing gloves that led to the first championship belt that launched his career and stardom. A fight in which he, the underdog, had knocked out his opponent in just three rounds. I’d watched him as he’d placed those gloves inside the case, as if he were laying out the king’s crowned jewels in a museum. He didn’t know I stood just out of sight behind a partially closed door. Didn’t know I could hear him saying to himself in a hushed announcer’s voice: “And here he is, The Storrrrm! The new middleweight champion of the world!” I shake my head and slide my pick into the lock on the case. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a thief. It’s not like I steal for a living, but I know people who…well, let’s just say they know things. And one person who knew things taught me how to pick locks. Any lock.”
