Lagniappe

• Patrick Earl Ryan on Seeing Yourself Not Only as a Victim, but as a Perpetrator of Harm and Hurt, Too
  Get personal with Patrick in this 2021 LitSeen interview in which he reveals his biggest struggle, his favorite ancestor, his fondest memory, and more.
• Saints+Sinners: New Fiction from the Festival 2021
  Patrick’s short story “Pineapples” was selected for the 2021 short story anthology edited by Tracy Cunningham and Paul J. Willis. An excerpt:

  Okay, I’m guilty. I won’t admit it to many people. But to Annie, I apologize. I completely forgot that it’s her day. I’m awful at remembering things. I forget dentist appointments, birthdays, and the right exit for the DMV. These things wind up costing money. Late fees. Extra gas. Sometimes, when I go to bed, I think I have a tumor in my brain, just over my right eye, an inch and a quarter under my skull. I imagine a squadron of white blood cells blasting the giant gray blimp into a thousand fatty chunks. I fall asleep remembering they used to be me. This is the source of my forgetfulness. I daydream. I’m a grown man.

• “Falling”, an excerpt from a yet-to-be-published novel Second Island, was selected in 2021 for Issue 34 of Gertrude. An excerpt:

  We pull into the train station at Cerbère in the late afternoon. It’s begun to snow even this far south and the dull specter of winter possesses the town—electric poles hooded by thick slabs of it, a greenhouse bearing the weight of a full foot of it, the train station’s sidewalks spiked with orange safety cones to warn of it. Max has every reason not to speak to me for so long. I keep putting off his questions and feelings. He knows something’s gone wrong. I can’t hide everything. He can read it in the lines across my face. I don’t want to hurt him, but telling him would hurt him more—it’s a matter of choosing the least troublesome of the two versions of histories.