Short Stories

Elise Juska's short stories have appeared in several journals and anthologies. Recent publications include "The Way I Saw the World Then," which appeared in the Winter 2009 issue of The Missouri Review and was shortlisted for the Best American Short Stories 2010. Below are some beginnings:

"The Way I Saw the World Then," from The Missouri Review, Winter 2009

The day Ms. Moreau would cry in front of her freshman honors English class was the stuff of Lawrence High School legend.

"Mr. Nice Guy," from American Literary Review, Spring 2009

Will has heard stories like this one before, the finding and returning of lost cell phones in New York.

"I Love You With All My Heart, Such As It Is," from The Carolina Quarterly, Winter 2007

As the car is spinning Addie can hear herself screaming, and later, looking back, it will be the thing that surprises her most: not the car skidding across a median or flying across four lanes of traffic or the fact that she escaped all of this unscathed, but the scream, the sound of it--shrill, high-pitched, desperate. She hadn't known her body was capable of such a sound.

"What I Feared," from The Subway Chronicles: Scenes from Life in New York, August 2006

In 1984 I was eleven and scared of everything. I was visiting my cousins in Park Slope and riding the subway for the first time. My real house was outside Philadelphia, where the sum total of my experience with public transportation was the school bus, one plane ride, and the car pool to CCD.

"The Stoop-Sitters," from Philly Fiction, March 2006

The women head on out like always, in that hour when the day goes from light to dark and their kids crowd into the street to play halfball and their teenagers take off in loud cars and tight clothes and their men, if they've still got them, settle into the couch in front of the Phillies game and the lightning bugs fire up all over and the smells of dinners still hang like glue in the sweat-thick Philly June air.

"Losing It," Good Housekeeping, December 2005

When Great-Aunt Edna turned eighty, she began refrigerating everything.

"Northeast Philly Girls," The Hudson Review, Spring 2002 & Writes of Passage: Coming-of-Age Stories and Memoirs from The Hudson Review, Spring 2008

Pushcart Prize nominee

"She got it right, every last inch of the whole experience: the Catholic icons, the gel-sticky bangs, the claustrophobia--details unchanging through the decades and transcending even their geography, even though they're totally and unmistakably Philly." - Philadelphia Weekly

Northeast Philly girls lived close. Their houses were close, clothes were tight, families crammed together on long city streets. On the corners, they stood in clumps, girls with big hair and tight jeans and fringed leather pocketbooks. They held lipstick-wet cigarettes between two fingers and exchanged bubble gum, lighters, compact mirrors, all with smooth, pink sleight of hand. These girls had names I wanted--Colleen, Eileen, Christine--the long 'e' insisting on femininity. Their boyfriends were cool and wiry, dropping kisses on their cheeks or loose arms around their necks. At night, so I heard, the boys took them to the St. Lucy's parking lot where they pressed up close in the warm backseats, and later, the girls emerged older, more knowing, having acquired fresh gossip and kissing bruises they would display like badges of honor on the corner the next day.

"Somewhere Else, Maine," Harvard Review, Fall 2001

The day a Philly cab rolled over her toe was the day Elaine decided to move to New England.

"Sundays with Melody," Berkeley Fiction Review, 2001

In his Wranglers, Ed's a stallion. The blue jeans hug his hips like a baseball glove worn soft, lined with copper rivets and busted inseams that make the women in Ye Olde Town Tavern fall in lust-at-first-sight. The ladies line up at the bar to watch his denim-smooth moves, giggling and eyeing him until he singles one out--like this lucky blond here with the straight gaze and the purple eye makeup, which looks kind of cheap but that's just the kind of mood Ed's in tonight.

"Feeding Grief," Black Warrior Review, Fall/Winter 2000

In grief, it helps that the food is smaller. It is more tidy, less overwhelming. Smooth cantaloupe balls, pickled tomatoes, stuffed mushrooms, pinwheels of red onion and mozzarella cheese. Chunks of cobbled dill pickle wrapped in slices of ham. Tiny drumsticks, triangles of tuna on rye, mini-pizzas on cracker tops, spiraling neatly from the center of the plate. Whole meals reduced to palm-sized, made manageable.

"The Test," The Seattle Review, 2000

I throw down a pack of gum with the pregnancy test. Watermelon Hubba Bubba. As if I were really craving something with sugar. As if this pregnancy test were just an afterthought, just a remote possibility that occurred to me in Aisle 3 next to the fruit roll-ups and three-ring binders. It's Saturday night. I'm bored. Why not. Let's stare at a white plastic stick for three minutes and let our mothers and grandmothers and old nuns and teachers flash through our heads while we count out nine months on our fingers and wonder how missing one pill could really matter and how long it will take before the other tenants notice. Whether everyone should marry for love. How much abortions cost, how much they hurt.