My story "His Last Great Gift" appears in the newest issue of Conjunctions, which is themed "Not Even Past: Hybrid Histories". The issue should be shipping in early November, so now is a great time to subscribe to be sure you get it right away.

Conjunctions 53 includes the first publication of seminal correspondence between Samuel Beckett and Grove Press’s Barney Rosset, as well as the first excerpts to appear from New Directions’ forthcoming edition of Roberto Bolaño’s Antwerp and the first English appearance of Thomas Bernhard’s major poem Ave Virgil.

The Hybrid Histories part of the issue (where my story appears) gathers work by Francine Prose, Paul La Farge, Adam McOmber, William H. Gass, Bernard Pomerance, Andrew Ervin, Peter Orner, Elizabeth Robinson, Gabriel Blackwell, Stephen Marche, Peter Gizzi, Maureen Howard, Mark Edmund Doten, Andrew Mossin, Elizabeth Rollins, D.E. Steward, and Paul West, while the rest of the magazine includes writing by Cole Swensen, Nathaniel Mackey, Tim Horvath, Martin Bellen, Ann Lauterback, Robert Coover, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Can Xue.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of my "His Last Great Gift":

Spear has already been living in the cabin overlooking High Rock for two weeks when the Electricizers speak of the New Motor for the first time. Awakened by their voices, Spear feels his way down the hallway from the dark and still unfamiliar bedroom to his small office. He lights a lamp and sits down at the desk. Scanning the press of ghastly faces around him, he sees they're all here tonight: Jefferson and Rush and Franklin, plus his own namesake, John Murray. They wait impatiently for him to prepare his papers, to dip a pen in ink and shake it free of the excess. When he's ready, they begin speaking, stopping occasionally to listen to other spirits that Spear can't quite see, that he doesn't yet have the skills to hear. These hidden spirits are far more ancient, and Spear intuits that they guide the Electricizers in the same way that the Electricizers guide him.

What the Electricizers show Spear how to draw, they call it the New Motor, a machine unlike anything he's ever seen before. He concentrates on every word, every detail of their revealment: How this cog fits against that one, how this wire fits into this channel. In cramped, precise letters, he details which pieces should be copper, which zinc or wood or iron. The machine detailed in this first diagram is a mere miniature, no bigger than a pocket watch but twice as intricate.

"His Last Great Gift" is the second historical fiction I've written (the other being my novella The Collectors), as well as the longest work I've published, coming in at just under 12,000 words. Since I'm still a long way away from finishing a novel, it should retain that crown for quite a while.

Obviously, I'm incredibly excited to be published by Conjunctions again, and to be in their print edition for the first time. I can't thank Bradford Morrow enough for his enthusiasm for this story, and for his encouragement of my work in general, as he's taken the two stories from the last year that I thought would be the hardest to place. He and fellow editors Pat Sims and Michael Bergstein are among the most professional and friendly people I've worked with in the lit mag world, and so I'd like to thank everyone at Conjunctions for making this such a pleasurable experience, and of course for publishing this long weird story in such a great-looking issue. I can't wait to read the rest of it.