Laureate by Andrew Meehan

"This week, I have at last found some work—chauffeuring dignitaries to and from a gathering of Nobel-prize winners at the old university in Heidelberg. This particular Laureate resembles a handsome pope. He looks seventy and he looks virile, the kind of man who would attempt intercourse with a tree from a high-speed train."

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Photo © Raul Lieberwirth.

Take a hallucinatory chauffeured tour of Heidelberg to dive bars, academic luncheons, and the homes of unmentionable historical figures in Andrew Meehan's 'Laureate'. The protagonist has a voice you won't soon forget. Read the June 2016 edition of Long Story, Short Journal: Laureate. Photo by German photographer Raul Lieberwirth. 

The Alexandra Role

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Dear Ms. Neumann, I have already drafted this letter many times. I think, when I write it now, that I am no longer writing to you but to myself, or Alexandra. If I were a religious or a romantic man I might propose God, but you have usurped his claim to omniscience, and He could never forgive me better than you.

February's edition of Long Story, Short Journal is Sydney Weinberg's 'The Alexandra Role' with a photo by Jillian Lukiwski. 'The Alexandra Role' takes Barthes's death of the author for a walk around Nabokovian territory, in a narrative which is both witty and haunting. Romance has well and truly passed in this tale where the feminine has gone missing, and a replacement is being recruited.  READ 'THE ALEXANDRA ROLE'.