2 January 2008 | Vol. 7, No. 4

My Seven Favorite Stories of '07

by BRIAN LEARY

42opus published a lot more new fiction in 2007 (nineteen original stories versus two in 2006), and in honor of year-end list-making, I've collected here some of my seven favorite stories from the last year. Some of them have already been honored by our Editors' Select prizes, a democratically constructed list; all of them are stories that I personally enjoyed reading.

I set out to make a list of five, but found choosing among the nineteen stories more difficult than I had anticipated. I whittled the list to seven, then, to justify my failure to choose, slipped a cheap play off the year into the title. The seven stories are listed below (ordered alphabetically by author).

"No More Alligator Feet" by Aaron H. Gilbreath

"We Were Almost Superstars" by Sara Kaye Larson

"Please Don't Put That Thing on My Head—I Work for the Government" by M. E. Parker

"Jewel" by Laurie Seidler

"Weed Man" by James Terry

"Streetsmart Loca and the Pomegranate Theory" by Sasha Vivelo

"Missing the Point
Or, At the Edgewood Home for Girls I Learned Many Things, Some Applicable to the World at Large" by Genanne Walsh