Author

Kent Nelson

Kent Nelson

Kent Nelson has traveled widely in search of birds —to Costa Rica, Ecuador, and to every corner of North America—and has run seven marathons, including Taos, LA and Pike’s Peak. His recent stories have appeared in the Atlantic, the Antioch Review and the Gettysburg Review. [2011]

CONTRIBUTIONS

34.4 Cover

Fiction

Jan 06 2012

Race

Hakim woke early the morning of the half-marathon—six A.M.—the last Saturday in August, though the race didn’t start until seven-thirty. Sarah, his renter, had to be at the Yeast-I-Can-Do at five, so she made coffee before she left, though never strong enough, and he added a spoonful of instant to the carafe. Sarah had an upstairs room—renting, for Hakim was an experiment whose verdict was still out. The house was too big for one person, and Hakim liked having the extra money for utilities, which in a small town were expensive. He didn’t mind Sarah’s peculiarities. She kept an odd schedule, sometimes in bed at seven, sometimes going out with friends and staying out all night. She was tall and had wild red hair and had come from Vermont to ice climb, though it was summer when people got work and fall when rooms and apartments opened up. She had broken up with her boyfriend, with whom she’d been camping, and maybe because she was twenty-six, half as old as he was, he found himself focusing on her comings and goings more than he wished to.

32.3 Cover

Fiction

Sep 01 2009

The Path of the Left Hand

Globe wasn’t cold in winter, but there were months of less light and more darkness. In other years he’d played tennis, hiked in the mountains and increased his minutes on the stair-step machine, but that December and January he responded as if he were in a state of dormancy, like the fish in Queen Creek that lowered their body temperatures or the snakes that stayed in burrows for days at a time. He rarely went to the gym or the club. He watched television dramas and read English sea novels, and when Julia offered to host a party or they were invited somewhere, he begged off.