Edward Salem is a 2023 Kresge Artist Fellow in Literary Arts and the recipient of the 2022 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize. He was chosen by Ottessa Moshfegh as the winner of BOMB magazine’s 2021 Fiction Contest and was selected by Louise Glück as a finalist for the 2021 Bergman Prize. His writing has been published in Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, The Columbia Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Best Debut Short Stories (Catapult), and elsewhere. He is the co-founder and co-director of City of Asylum/Detroit, a nonprofit that provides long-term sanctuary to writers and artists who have been persecuted for their work, so that they may live and create freely without censorship or threats to their lives.
Techno plays from outdoor speakers at the beach restaurant in Tel Aviv. I scan faces, trying to place them— Poland? Russia? Tan, lipless men toting wives and kids, giving me dirty looks as I suck my shisha. The … Continue reading “Hellraiser”
