McSweeney’s Issue 41

This latest lightning-lashed hardcover is a head-exploder from end to end - on the fiction front there’s Thomas McGuane and Aimee Bender, Deb Olin Unferth and Ryan Boudinot, ill-fated river trips and lovelorn robots and Hollywood super-agents bent on revenge; on the nonfiction side there are amazing accounts of upheaval and rebirth in Tehran and Mississippi and Mexico City and Riverside, California. There is full-color art all the way through, too, and a special section of Australian Aboriginal fiction, edited by Australia’s Chris Flynn, that is so good you won’t believe it. This one is overstuffed in the best summer (northern hemisphere) blockbuster fashion—let it into your life!

Table of Contents:

• Letters from Susan Straight, Jason Polan, David Lida, John Flowers, and Cirocco Dunlap.
• River Camp by Thomas McGuane
• Wordkeepers by Aimee Bender
• American Tall Tale by Steven Millhauser
• A Land Rush in Iran by Viveca Mellegard
• The Wolf and the Wild by Jess Walter
• Stay Where You Are by Deb Olin Unferth
• The Virago by Henry Bean
• What Happens After Sixteen Years in Prison? by J. Malcolm Garcia
• Afternoon Street by Jowhor Ile
• Robot Sex by Ryan Boudinot
• You Can’t Live With the Doubt by Sibylla Brodzinsky and Max Shoening
• An Excerpt from A Million Heavens by John Brandon
• Terra Australis: Four Stories from Australian Aboriginal Writers
• The Promise by Tony Birch
• S&J by Ellen van Neerven-Currie
• It’s Too Difficult to Explain by Tara June Winch
• Tonsils by Melissa Lucashenko