Mindy Farabee
Life is a little tricky for the inhabitants of Amelia Gray’s stories. They might fall in love with a bit of frozen tilapia or find themselves policed by javelinas. There are multiplying vultures to contend with and hair that must be eaten, and the problem of trying to find a girlfriend in the post-apocalypse. Perhaps closer to articulated impulses than fully-formed fictions, Gray’s work tackles our emotional realities through unreal set-ups: A penguin and an armadillo walk into a bar; a woman’s boyfriend takes up residence inside a suitcase. It is this try-anything aesthetic that invigorates and sometimes undermines Gray’s 
Destiny, the 18-year-old protagonist of “Muscle Memory,” one of Katherine Karlin’s best stories, is determined to become a welder. With her family’s stability demolished by Hurricane Katrina, Destiny has taken the lowest paying job in the shipyard, overseeing equipment sign-out to help support herself and her mother. “You’re not going to learn anything stuck down here,” a co-worker warns her, a fact that Destiny is acutely aware of. If the workplace is where most of us size up our place in the world, Destiny is in search of something at once humble and utterly life-changing: a skill. Whether it’s the