Lexy knew better than to turn around. The swings were twisted up to the steel frame, the soles of her flip-flops planted in the dust.

Ben enjoys this kind of project—he is a pediatric dentist and likes to be outdoors during his free time. His current enthusiasm is pineapples, which he claims can be grown even in temperate climates. 

I can’t help feeling that other people had better reasons for their breakups than we did. (This is characteristic of me, Drew would say, the way I am always comparing. How can you be happy if you’re constantly measuring your life against the lives of others? And not even examining, he would say.

I'm writing this letter to tell you some things you might not know about your writer-in-residence, Henry Marks. Some you may already know. If you've read Private George Johnson, his first novel, 

  When Joyce Carol Oates’s canonical story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” was made into a film in 1985, the author mostly approved. Of its lead actor, Oates says, “Laura Dern is so dazzlingly right as ‘my’ Connie that I ma…