October 17, 2022

Carve Magazine

Raymond Carver Contest, Fall 2022

To Love a Stranger is Certain Death by Brandon J. Choi

October 17, 2022

Carve Magazine

Raymond Carver Contest, Fall 2022

To Love a Stranger is Certain Death by Brandon J. Choi

In the summer of 2006, when my hometown’s beloved Choi’s Videos went out of business, Mr. and Mrs. Choi decided to sell their inventory as a last-ditch effort before retiring and moving across the street from their eldest son in North Carolina

October 17, 2022

Carve Magazine

Raymond Carver Contest, Fall 2022

A Rugged Border by Candice May

October 17, 2022

Carve Magazine

Raymond Carver Contest, Fall 2022

Halfway between Victoria, where he lived, and Vancouver, where he had no reason to go, my brother jumped off the top deck of a passenger ferry

October 17, 2022

Carve Magazine

Raymond Carver Contest, Fall 2022

-K by Ned Carter Miles

October 17, 2022

Carve Magazine

Raymond Carver Contest, Fall 2022

A ring of yellow salts marked the upstairs bathroom’s off-white tile, and at its center was a fresh golden puddle

July 10, 2022

Carve Magazine

Summer 2022

Tàidù by Patrick J. Zhou

July 10, 2022

Carve Magazine

Summer 2022

To tune out the American voices behind him, Jia—his forehead leaning against the tacky smog-crusted glass of the bus window—counted the fluorescent orange bulbs as they flashed by on the concrete tunnel wall.

April 19, 2022

Carve Magazine

Spring 2022

November Recital by Hailey Rose Hanks (Fiction Winner)

April 19, 2022

Carve Magazine

Spring 2022

November Recital by Hailey Rose Hanks (Fiction Winner)

A tag sticks out of Maren’s t-shirt at the top beneath her jacket: MEDIUM. COTTON/POLYESTER BLEND. The wind blows. GENTLE CYCLE ONLY. I want to trip her—

January 25, 2022

Carve Magazine

Winter 2022

Carnival by Emily Lu Wang

January 25, 2022

Carve Magazine

Winter 2022

At my mother’s high school graduation, one of the wealthier families donated money to be spent on ceremonial doves. You know how rich people spend their money, my mother said.

July 15, 2021

Carve Magazine

Summer 2021

Pests by Matt Jones

July 15, 2021

Carve Magazine

Summer 2021

You know how some people look like their dogs? Or how some people begin to look like their dogs the more time they spend together?

July 15, 2021

Carve Magazine

Summer 2021

Huevos Estrellados by Vanessa Bernice De La Cruz

July 15, 2021

Carve Magazine

Summer 2021

Huevos Estrellados by Vanessa Bernice De La Cruz

I want you to picture this. There’s a girl, right. And she’s at a diner sitting opposite of her dad.

July 15, 2021

Carve Magazine

Summer 2021

Pre-Existing Conditions by Jose Diego Medina

July 15, 2021

Carve Magazine

Summer 2021

Pre-Existing Conditions by Jose Diego Medina

I was sitting in the 4:36 winter light of my apartment’s living room, thinking of nothing in particular, stroking Papi sleepily wincing in my lap, when—suddenly I went plunging back, head-over-heels into the swamp of old shame.

April 14, 2021

Carve Magazine

Spring 2021

Impossible Tess by Kimm Brockett Stammen

April 14, 2021

Carve Magazine

Spring 2021

Impossible Tess by Kimm Brockett Stammen

My wife’s sister plays all kinds of flutes. Metal and wood, tarnished and bright, silver, gold, a little painted thing made of tin, a slim jet-black cylinder made of stuff she calls grenadilla, and an antique glass one in a soft leather sachet that through all her traipsings stays miraculously unbroken.

October 25, 2020

Carve Magazine

Fall 2020, Raymond Carver Contest

Sandhill Cranes by Anna Prawdzik Hull

October 25, 2020

Carve Magazine

Fall 2020, Raymond Carver Contest

Tía Consuelo, with her big mouth and big earrings and eighties perm, sits me down at the kitchen table and says, “I don’t want you to work for that puto.” By puto, she means Johnny González, owner of Speedy G Car Wash on San Mateo.

July 12, 2020

Carve Magazine

Summer 2020

Swamp Creatures by Caleb Tankersley

July 12, 2020

Carve Magazine

Summer 2020

While we’re eating dinner or when we’re tired of fighting, my husband and I stare at the swamp behind our house. Gary sips beer as he watches the festering water with awe, like an important piece of architecture.

July 12, 2020

Carve Magazine

Summer 2020

Ask Me Anything by Danielle Batalion Ola

July 12, 2020

Carve Magazine

Summer 2020

Ask Me Anything by Danielle Batalion Ola

By her senior year, the ghosts on campus were so boring that Allie wished she were a skeptic.

April 24, 2020

Carve Magazine

Spring 2020

Luna by Reece McCormack

April 24, 2020

Carve Magazine

Spring 2020

There was a problem with joyriding in our village at the time.

April 24, 2020

Carve Magazine

Spring 2020

Cleft by Jason M. Glover (Nonfiction Winner)

April 24, 2020

Carve Magazine

Spring 2020

Cleft by Jason M. Glover (Nonfiction Winner)

This is how surgery works: “Count down with me: ten, nine, eight…”

January 15, 2020

Carve Magazine

Winter 2020

Tent People by Kate Arden McMullen

January 15, 2020

Carve Magazine

Winter 2020

We were everybody in the kitchen together.

April 6, 2019

Carve Magazine

Spring 2019

An Egyptian Myth by Donald Levering (Poetry Winner)

April 6, 2019

Carve Magazine

Spring 2019

An Egyptian Myth by Donald Levering (Poetry Winner)

I’m not really waiting in the car for my son / because I don’t want to see / his skeletal dwelling

April 6, 2019

Carve Magazine

Spring 2019

This Is My Body by April Vázquez (Nonfiction Winner)

April 6, 2019

Carve Magazine

Spring 2019

This Is My Body by April Vázquez (Nonfiction Winner)

During my junior year of college, I was thumbing through a women’s magazine at the dentist’s office when I came across a love quiz containing the following question: “You know you’re in love with him because…”

January 15, 2019

Carve Magazine

Winter 2019

Pinkies, Fuzzies, Hoppers by JP Kemmick

January 15, 2019

Carve Magazine

Winter 2019

The mice are in the basement, caged and pegged for the belly of a snake.

January 15, 2019

Carve Magazine

Winter 2019

Goose by Chelsey Grasso

January 15, 2019

Carve Magazine

Winter 2019

“This type of thing doesn’t just happen overnight,” the man in the white coat told him as he shined a blinding light into his cornea, but Mirko was quite certain that’s exactly what had happened.