This piece is excerpted from the novel We Were Pretending by Hannah Gersen, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
By CLAIRE JIA
This piece is excerpted from the novel Wanting by Claire Jia, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
This piece is excerpted from the short story collection Where to Carry the Sound by Nina Sudhakar, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
By NEYSA KING
This piece is an excerpt from the novel How to Be Loved.
Cláudia’s eyeliner is dark as earth and heavy as her parrot-red lipstick. As she bends over to speak to me in low tones, her blouse falls open. I don’t know what it means to be attracted to her; I just want to be near her body. But she’s a college student from Rio, and I’m five years old. For the last year she’s been my nanny—dressing me, feeding me while Mom and Dad work. Every other Friday, if I’m good, she shucks me into my two-piece bathing suit with frills on the bottom and a pink butterfly on top and takes me to Singing Beach, where I can play with the skinny-legged sandpipers that the ocean is lava. Run, chase, run, chase, run, chase—my long, dark curls wet and heavy, and my suit bottom sliding down my straight hips—until the sunlight stretches as long and pale as a skeleton across the sand.
Translated from the Spanish by SARAH THOMAS
Translator’s Note:
In the two decades that I have known Mar Gómez Glez, she has established herself as one of the most memorable and unique voices of her generation of Spanish writers. Mar’s output is impressive in its creativity, complexity, and the diversity of its genres and subjects: three novels, more than twice as many plays, a children’s book, and two non-fiction books (a study of Saint Teresa of Ávila and a cultural history of blood). These works treat a wide variety of topics ranging from pressing political themes to the deeply personal autobiographical content of her novel in vignettes La edad ganada, from which this text is drawn. What all her work shares in common is a deep ethical concern with human experience, the connections forged and broken between us, and our responsibility to others.
Among these diverse works, La edad ganada is one of the most experimental and personal. It brings fresh form to the bildungsroman: standalone chapters offer snapshots of an unnamed protagonist’s coming of age from two to thirty, their sequential numeric titles indicating her age (in the original, this text is titled “veinticuatro” or “twenty-four”). Across the stories, the narrative point of view constantly shifts, at times in daring or surprising ways, but the protagonist’s experience and voice remain at the center of the text. While deeply personal, the work also speaks to deeper ethical and relational imperatives. This chapter, which I have called “Playing Chicken” in the translation, is rooted in cultural specificity—the bureaucracy of Spanish universities, the classic winter stew cocido madrileño—but also explores a story that is all too familiar and universal: of power imbalance, the unspoken expectations articulated just below the surface of what is explicitly said, and the potentially devastating consequences of playing along.
—Sarah Thomas
Playing Chicken
They had arranged to meet in the park at 2 pm sharp. The student arrived at quarter to, and sat on a bench, watching the children play to entertain herself. The air was strangely cold, a springtime chill that came and went.
By THEODORA BAUER
Translated by AARON CARPENTER
Piece appears below in English and the original German
Translator Note
Theodora Bauer’s novel Chikago (2017) follows two sisters from the Croatian minority in Burgenland, Austria. In this stand-alone chapter we learn that the family was ostracized from the small community in one of the poorest, but also most ethnically diverse regions in Austria. Burgenland was part of Hungary while under Hapsburg rule and is still home to Hungarian and Croatian minorities. This chapter begins with an idyllic trip that the father and his youngest daughter take to the village to do some business. When they hear a group of drunken townspeople plan on raiding the Roma camp just outside of town, where the father’s smithy is, they race back home to warn them.
Excerpted from The Conviction of Things Not Seen, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025.
The cemetery had inhabitants, and not just those whose descendants had laid them to rest. Two old men were living on the Ordoñez plot. Next to the abandoned Llora mausoleum, a family of four had pitched their makeshift tent. As more squatters crept in, to whom the administrators of the Cementerio de Manila turned a blind eye, a village of sorts arose, keeping watch over the stones of the dead, sweeping fallen leaves from their graves and removing flowers that had wilted and browned in the tropical sun. Thus they styled themselves caretakers of the graves, inspiring even greater tolerance for their presence among those in charge, such that far from brusquely restricting their movements, the guards at the gate greeted them by name and allowed them free access and egress without much resistance. The crypt of the Romulo family even hosted a sari-sari store for the cemetery’s living inhabitants, and some cunning member of the community had taken the key to the public restroom for safekeeping at the store, under the watchful eye of a gray-haired woman affectionately known as Tandang Cora—a joke entirely lost on foreign visitors who, in any case, were few.
Excerpted from The Church of Mastery, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025
Or, to use some expressions which are nearest the heart of the Masters, it is necessary for the archer to become, in spite of himself, an unmoved center. Then comes the supreme and ultimate miracle: art becoming “artless,” shooting becomes not-shooting, a shooting without bow and arrow; the teacher becomes a pupil again, the Master a beginner, the end a beginning, and the beginning perfection.
—Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery
Given all their invisible stresses, all their accumulated ambitions, and the narrowness of their paths, the Freedom Riders in Pursuit of Veracity agreed they needed to relax to prepare for their journey down South; relaxation is not a luxury, it is a requirement. America has a problem with Black people relaxing. Or behaving like a boss. That’s why William would spend an entire day now and again by himself like Jesus in the wilderness. He’d meander through the weirdest stacks of a downtown bookstore just to wander. Who knows what Language was destined to change you? That’s why he took up cricket with René from Port of Spain. Why he’d take Rowena out to restaurants they could not afford to order dishes he could not pronounce—spine straight, risking glares.
Excerpted from Drownproofing and Other Stories, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025.
Dr. Rafael Améndarez
San Francisco, California, United States of America
July 14, 1968
Srita. Liliam Améndarez
San Salvador, El Salvador, Central America
Greetings my always dear cousin, Lili!
Last week I was discharged from the hospital, and considering my life’s current hustle and bustle, just in case, I’ve decided to congratulate you in advance for your birthday. Congratulations a thousand times on that auspicious August 9.
A few days ago, by accident, I came across a letter among old and musty papers. One of those things one keeps without knowing why. Things that are stored away after reading them and are not read again until that day when unexpectedly, by chance, they appear in our hands. Imagine a letter written a whopping two decades ago! Yellowed by the years. A letter from a friend. This one dates back to World War II.
At that time, I was in France with the American army. I remember it was a freezing day, bitterly cold, in January 1944. There in the French Vosges, between Colmar and Strasbourg. That winter I remember vividly because it was extremely harsh. A man could be wounded and freeze within minutes. Climbing a mountain loaded with winter clothing, weapons, and ammunition, one would sweat, and that sweat running down the face, sliding, in a moment when one stopped to catch their breath, froze into ice splinters, which could be peeled off.
Excerpted from Jaguar, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025.
It was hard to stand out in the family alone. Benito’s parents, tías and tíos, valued children more than they valued money. They valued mothers more than they did models. When a man in the family became a father, he might as well have become a judge, or a reverend. You could be an arsonist, a seasoned gangster. You could even have slept with the priest. But if you became a parent, you would be alright in their eyes.
Tío Esteban was forty-one when he went to prison again. And Tía was older: forty-five. It didn’t seem likely that they would become parents, so all faith in them was lost.
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