Fiction

Never Start a Rumor

A Texan of the fourth generation, DILLON ANDERSON of Houston, Texas, is contributing to the Atlantic a series of short stories about two traveling hobos who live by their wits and who but for their sentiment and gullibility might sometimes win. This is the third in the series and there are more to come. Mr. Anderson, a member of the law firm of Baker, Botts, Andrews & Parish, says that, as a lawyer, his working time is spent largely in keeping other people out of trouble — that writing stories in his spare time helps to keep him out of trouble.

Poor Cousin Evelyn

JAMES YAFFE made his first appearance in the Atlantic with his short story “Mr. Feldman,” which was published in January, 1949. This is his second, and we hope for more to come. When pressed for details about himself, he wrote us: “Born in Chicago in 1927, moved to New York with my family very young, educated at Fieldston High School and Yale, spent a year in the Saw, got out of Yale with my M.A. degree, and spent a year in Paris.”

Black Water Blues

Each year the Atlantic awards prizes for the best short story, essay, and poem which have been produced in those college classes using the Atlantic in their English composition. Ihe prize-winning short story for 1949 is by MONTY CULVER, who wrote it in his senior year at the University of Pittsburgh and under the friendly stimulus of his teacher, Mr. Edwin L. Peterson. It pleases us that Ada McCormick, without knowing of the Atlantic prize, recognized the merit of “Black Water Blues.”She bought it, released it to be an Atlantic “First,”and will publish it in Letter, her magazine of research and recognition in Tucson.

The Inner Self

A Rhode Islander who entered the writing field by way of radio, EDWIN O’CONNOR graduated from Notre Dame in 1939, served in the Coast Guard during the war, and was for a while associated with the Yankee Network. He is now living in Boston, where he divides his time between his first novel and his short stories and satires, a number of which have already appeared in the Atlantic.

The Black Gates of Keokuk

“When I was a kid,” writes RICHARD PIKE BISSELL, “I floated down the river twice and bummed the freights home.” Then, after graduating from Phillips Exeter and Harvard, he returned to Iowa and again went on the river. He worked on the Monongahela, on the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Upper and Lower Mississippi, first as deck hand and then as mate and pilot. The story which follows is one of the more striking episodes in his first novel. A Stretch on the River, which will appear as an Atlantic-Little, Brown book. The Atlantic, which published Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, is happy to find a worthy successor in Dick Bissell.

The Convert

MARY LAVIN does her writing today looking out on one of the loveliest carves of the River Boyne with the famous Hill of Tara rising above the distant trees. A protégée of Lord Dunsany, she turned to the Atlantic with her first short stories, which when published in 1942 in book form, under the title Tales from Bective Bridge, were awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Her first novel. The House in Clewe Street, was serialized in our columns, and ice are happy to announce that her second. Mary O’Grady, has just been published.

Recipe for Pork

Time and Ebb

A short story

A Forgotten Poet

A short story