The Normal School: A Literary Magazine

"I want to have no synonym. No confusion with the other lost children, who cry quietly because they haven’t been young since grief froze fingers and toes, took hearts and squeezed them of decadent innocence, dripping away like rose-colored honey." Read Simona Zaretsky's flash fiction "Anniversary" out now! Click here for more: www.thenormalschool.com/blog/2021/04/14/simona-zaretsky... #TheNormalSchool

"Here I skate 10 km, bringing my season total to 191 km. Dust on crust, and I come out early enough that I make first tracks. What I do not yet know is that this will be the last picture that I would take before we go into lockdown." Take in the wonder of Teow Lim Goh's "Landscapes of A Pandemic" Click on the link for more: www.thenormalschool.com/blog/2021/04/07/teow-lim-goh... #TheNormalSchool

Hey Normals! Great news, our April newsletter is out today! This month features A Normal Interview with Melissa Febos by M.D. McIntyre, a short story by Daniel Mazzacane, a Kristene Kayne Brown poem, and so much more! Newsletter link: bit.ly/n0rmal-apr21 Not subscribed, yet? Well, what are you waiting for! Click here to subscribe: bit.ly/normal-signup... #TheNormalSchool See more

"Wilder met Corey four months after moving to Oakhurst when Wilder managed to get a spot on the logging crew mid-season." Read Daniel Mazzacane's new short story "Until it Hits Something Solid" out now! For more of our April publications, click on the link to our website: www.thenormalschool.com/blog/2021/04/07/daniel-mazzacane

"I’ve come to realize the reason I am not making connection with anyone is a sign from the universe. I need to go within, to figure things out on my own." Check out Kim Wyatt's short story "Plastic Has Consequences" featured in our March issue of #TheNormalSchool. Click here for more: www.thenormalschool.com/blog/2021/03/17/kim-wyatt

Hey Normals! Our March Newsletter is out NOW! Check out A Normal Interview with Hanif Abdurraqib by Mialise Carney, an essay by Amy Hassinger, Eileen Pettycrew's poem "Small Shape of the Future," and more. Click here for the latest: bit.ly/TNS-NL-Mar21 To subscribe to our newsletter, click on the link: bit.ly/normal-signup... #TheNormalSchool

"The beginnings of new threads emerge. This time she puts her palms against the threads, pushes them back into place on his skin, holds them as one might hold together something glued." New in our March issue: Natalie Teal McAllister's short story, "The Unraveling." Click on the link to read more: www.thenormalschool.com//2021/03/03/natalie-teal-mcallister... #TheNormalSchool

Imagine you are walking through tall grass, your hand brushing against green blade after blade. Walk through your memories like they are tall blades of grass. Let them brush up against you." New March multimedia "InnerChild4U" by Bowie Rowan out now! Click on the link for more: www.thenormalschool.com/blog/2021/03/03/bowie-rowan #TheNormalSchool

"I folded countless cranes into existence that yearso many that I can now bring them to life through muscle memorywithout realizing that some folds, some creases you can never take back." Read Sangi Lama's "Butchering" out now! Click the link to read the amazing works up on our website this month. www.thenormalschool.com/blog/2021/03/10/sangi-lama... #TheNormalSchool

"I think I enjoy how many people can perceive the same performance in different ways, and how those ways might be directly linked to the way those people are perceived by the public when not performing anything beyond simply living." Check out A Normal Interview with Hanif Abdurraqib by Mialise Carney ahead of the author's virtual event! Click here to read more: www.thenormalschool.com///03/10/hanif-abdurraqib-interview... #TheNormalSchool

"Give me Leda with thighs / like bear traps, skull-crushing, ready to rush / the sky on her own wings. Leda who lies / poised, nails polished red on her lush shore." Check out Madison Rahner's two poems now up on our site! out now! Click the link to read more: www.thenormalschool.com/blog/2021/02/24/madison-rahner... #thenormalschool See more

"For you, I sat under a yew tree's shade / for a thousand years and did not twitch: / I ate only lemons amid a welter of fruit." A new poem "Epithalamion" by Virginia Konchan. To read more, click on the link: t.co/tSFHJ8JOcH?amp=1

"By the pressure of water / my arms glide back / seraphic, / my fingers catching in the sea grass. / Here, I pray for the sting of salt in my eyes." Read new poem "The Fish as Healer" by Kelly Gray. Click on the link for more: https://www.thenormalschool.com/blog/2021/02/10/kelly-gray

Hey Normals! We have big news! We are now accepting multi-media submissions. And as a bonus, our first newsletter of the semester is out today: https://bit.ly/305Kt7z Not subscribed yet? Click here: https://forms.gle/ntvFEzkszYfSwpEYA #TheNormalSchool

We're back! Fall 2020 is underway and our editing team is hard at work on submissions. Stay tuned for announcements on the next publication!

Just popping in from our Summer hiatus in Normal HQ to share this little bit of good news from VIDA. We're very proud that, for our final print issue, we're in the top 5 for the 2019 Larger Literary Landscape. We're also very proud of the students and staff who worked so hard to make it happen and we're committed to continuing the fight.

"My curls return in rain and in sudden wind. They returned that day, on the beach, standing beside a sand wall, scooped out by wind. We were on vacation, him from his regular self, and me from the self that pretended he was truly like this." remember to take a few minutes to stop and smell the roses in life, this story is one of those roses. https://bit.ly/2HNodG4 #thenormalschool

"When I was younger, I heard mermaids turn into foam when they die. On the rocky shores of Bodega Bay, I loved to watch the white bubbles roll over my feet when I stood at the crashing waves: generations of mermaids chronicled in salty ink. This beer could be a mermaid, too. Salt, skin, and scales fermented into an IPA. I felt sad that even the most beautiful, mystical things still die." This story though... https://bit.ly/2VkwWHE #thenormalschool

"Now, it’s December and I don’t know if I still want to study anything, let alone culinary arts, let alone at Paul Smith’s. Though I certainly don’t want to go back to sleeping on my uncle’s couch in Germantown. That much I know. But another semester of Dozer, of the Predator, of freezing my ass off in negative forty-degree weather as I hurry from class to dorm to class again? I don’t know." This story's grip holds tight and doesn't let go. https://bit.ly/2PhkpRx #thenormalschool

" In bed, Paulita began to wonder what it was about herself that could possibly appeal to a man like Julian certainly not her wardrobe, nor her appreciation for arts and crafts. And for that matter, what explained her attraction to Julian, if but the gloss of high-end consumerism she thrilled at the rush of his sports car and the crackle of the exhaust popping like a gun and the smells of money and bourbon, exotic to Paulita, which rolled off Julian in waves." A chain of events you don't want to miss. https://bit.ly/38LQgSd #thenormalschool

Very proud to have published this, thank you!

"We moved at night. We felt invincible. We preempted every secret by saying, I’m drunk, so you know I’m telling the truth. (The secret was always, I want to kiss you.) (The opposite of homesickness is still homesickness.) (There are a lot of ways to feel ill toward a place or a time.) (The ill of feeling too removed, and longing to return.) (The ill of feeling not removed enough.)" Behold the winner of the 2019 Bradley & Stucky-French Prize! Where I Was From by Steven Moore https://bit.ly/31VbqdZ #thenormalschool

https://bit.ly/2uXHhys "She’ll see another world sometimes: a great glass apartment looking out on the nebula of Manhattan, the black hole of Central Park. In this life, she softens into him; he makes her laugh with how clumsily his heartland tongue twists the Urdu phrases she teaches him. When they are together, the need for anyone else evaporates." There's no better day to fall in love with N.H. Azmi's gripping piece on a tempestuous relationship. #thenormalschool

"There was an odd intimacy to hearing a teacher cry. Sometimes I wish that I had asked him something about it. But what could he have said? There are moments I've feared he was not crying at all, but that he was having some kind of attack, and that we bear responsibility, that the other students and I were caught in some sort of horrific bystander effect." Reading this story by Dylan McGonigle will be the best decision you've made all day. https://bit.ly/2vwazEg #thenormalschool

"Full of smart things to say, which I can only nod to, intelligently, and wonder if I’m doing this to prove that I’m better ... or worse than I thought" So this poem by Amelie Meltzer! https://bit.ly/39vzWF0 #thenormalschool

"But it’s not what you might think. Roger isn’t afraid of turning twenty-seven because he’s afraid maybe he’ll die at that age too, like his older brother did, like twenty-seven years old is some cursed age to be. Roger’s afraid of many things in his life but being dead isn’t one of them." This link answers what you're wondering about Roger https://bit.ly/2wfNMxf #thenormalschool