I Think I'll Stay Here Forever

In George Choundas's I Think I'll Stay Here Forever, winner of the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction, "here" is so many places-from the quasi-mythical tanker ship Katingo to the New York subway to the aisles of a cathedral-turned-supermarket to the streets of Cuba, where roosters duel like gods and breezes "blow at the same speed, with the same delicate and diffused intensity, as a human breath." Wherever they find themselves, Choundas's characters stay with us long after we finish reading. These are the faces of old friends who are always yet full of "surprises, disconnections, the rhythm of the world flinging itself successively into us-we who pretended we had it mastered."