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I often tell students struggling with balance to think of their writing as a physical object. Where the narration slows for an emotional beat, where it speeds the action, where it stops for a back flash or sketches out a character—each of these moments affect the overall shape of a story. In our new issue, “Open Season,” the very words on the page begin to take form and shudder to life. And then: they are hunted. What does the word “Kentucky” smell like? How does the word “silicone” feel as it is gutted with a knife? Paul Griner will tell you. In this extraordinary and imaginative tale, a hunter is on a quest for the perfect word. Even as the words grow scarce and harder to find, he is keenly aware of their strength and power. Be sure to read Paul Griner’s Q&A to find out how he created this enchantingly surreal world. I  first read “Open Season” on a train, and immediately began to picture track, wheels, engine—their silver color, their weight in my hands. Even now, I find myself looking for hidden words, and on each subsequent read of “Open Season” I fall more deeply under its spell.

Will Allison, our new contributing editor, brought “Bad Return” to the table at One Story and took it through the editorial process. We’re thrilled that he has come on board, and also thrilled to be running a piece by Aimee Bender, a writer we’ve all admired for years. Here is Will to introduce this beautiful and mysterious tale–I hope you all enjoy it as much as we did. -HT

About halfway through the story featured in our new issue, Aimee Bender’s “Bad Return,” things start to get very strange. One minute, the protagonist, Claire, is sort of taking part in a sort-of antiwar rally. The next minute, she’s watching a hundred college coeds rolling naked and having sex in the dirt while a charlatan steals their wallets. And then things really start to get strange.

I must confess, a lot of surreal stories don’t do much for me. When the rules of a fictional world go willy-nilly, it’s like tennis without a net, or listening to someone else’s dream. “Tell a dream,” the story writer Lee K. Abbott once warned me, “lose a reader.”

But Aimee didn’t lose me, not even for a second. I think one of the (many) reasons I enjoyed “Bad Return” so much is that the story never feels surrealistic simply for the sake of surrealism. Rather, Aimee’s surrealism always serves character. The strange things that happen to Claire happen to her precisely because of who she is, the choices she makes, the actions she takes, and they have a profound impact on the story’s outcome. It doesn’t hurt that the story’s stranger scenes are also quite unnerving and suspenseful.

To read more about “Bad Return”—including Aimee’s thoughts on her own literary strangeness—please check out our Q&A with the author.

My freshman year of college, I was assigned to a quad. There were four girls jammed into a space meant for two people, and before long we became known as a collective: Room 208. We don’t see each other too often anymore, but whenever we do cross paths I can instantly feel the bonds of our shared past and friendship. We went through the trials of early adulthood together, and like blood, it sealed something between us. In the new issue of One Story, “Girls Only,” Karen Shepard delves deep into the mystery of college friendships, when a group of old roommates—reunited for a wedding—unravels after a hidden secret comes to the surface. This is a tale about collective guilt and responsibility, about the lies people will tell themselves to keep looking in the mirror each day. The crime that inspired “Girls Only,” which Karen Shepard reveals in her Q&A with us, is shocking and not for the faint of heart. But it is how that initial seed of an idea was altered, cultivated and grown into a story that reveals Shepard’s tremendous talent as a writer and observer of the human condition. Already, One Story has been receiving messages from people touched by “Girls Only,” and the complicated issues of self-deception it lays bare with skillful humor and brutal honesty. I’ve been an admirer of Karen Shepard’s work for years, and it’s an honor to welcome her into the One Story family. Like Room 208, I have a feeling she’d have my back in a fight, and if I called for help she would come running.

When I am reading a good story, there is nearly always a moment, early on, when I feel suddenly pulled, like magic, into the world the author has created. It happened on page two of C. Joseph Jordan’s “The Quiet,” when I read the line: The doctor who examined him had a propensity to slam doors. After that sentence I was right beside Sergeant Malick, twitching at every loud noise and experiencing the strangeness of the real world after wartime. At his Welcome Home party, Sergeant Malick wanders through the house he grew up in. He is a changed man, unable to share the secrets he carries, but room by room, he begins to leave the soldier behind and find himself again. C. Joseph Jordan has been working on “The Quiet”  for years, and it shows in the careful way he re-creates Sergeant Malick’s experience. Be sure to visit our Q&A to find out how Jordan revised the piece and drew on the experiences of current soldiers returning from overseas. As timing would have it, just as One Story went to press with this issue, President Obama announced that all American troops would be leaving Iraq by the end of the year. Here’s to everyone coming home safely. Until then, I hope our readers will enjoy “The Quiet,” a haunting story of one soldier crossing between two worlds.