Ravi Mangla

I have an article in Jacobin on police violence.

Read my new story (”Canvasser”) in the double issue (43/44) of Salt Hill.

I have a new story (”Giving”) in Issue 107 of The Rupture.

I have two micro stories up at Wigleaf this week. Read “Taxonomy” and “Provenance.”

I have a very short piece up at Wigleaf. There’s also a 2 1/2 question interview as a post-reading palate cleanser.

Honored to be profiled in the May issue of (585) Magazine.

I have a short essay (”Rations”) up at Quarterly West:

Quiet year on the writing front. Expect more words in 2018!

Fiction:

Wigleaf - “Memento Mori” (January)

Nonfiction:

“I’m not afraid of meaning per se, but nor am I in search of it. Good, precise writing contains its own interpretative possibilities; if the sentences are right, you don’t have to chase meaning down. Any sense that one has found a meaning is usually just a pit stop, anyway.”

I have an essay up at the newly launched LitMag.

“In a courtroom that doubles as a mobile office for the DMV, my parents marry for a second time. Under different circumstances this would be cause for celebration, a collective victory for all those kids who saw their childhoods undone by divorce. Under different circumstances I might have bought them a blender or breadmaker (or, more conveniently, a custom license plate). Yet we have only the attending circumstances, which cast the proceedings in an altogether different light. My niece sits on my lap as we watch them recite vows and exchange rings: plain, unadorned bands. Once the ceremony has finished and the papers have been signed, we commemorate the occasion with a breakfast at Denny’s.”

“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”

I have a short short story in Wigleaf. (Also, it’s their 9th birthday tomorrow!)

“That our son had taken to crafting ceremonial death masks was a source of mild consternation. He was eight and still slept on vinyl sheets.“