The frailty of the human body and the strength that emerges from one woman's self-scrutiny are the subjects of Joanne Barker's "How To Be Naked". A swimming-pool locker room sets the scene for this unflinching assessment of nakedness in many forms.

Ben Lurie's "Looking Forward" tells the story of a young man dealing with the loss of his memory. An encounter with someone from his past--a stranger to him now--gives him an ominous sense of who he was and who he might become.

Jonathan Starke's "Sling and Stone" looks at Michelangelo's David with the eyes of a bodybuilder--and finds poignant mortality in the timeless statue.

Courtesy of the Boston Book Festival, the Great Brits and Books Panel, with Maria Tatar, Rachel Brownstein, Lisa Rodensky, and Leah Price, moderated by Drum editor Henriette Lazaridis Power. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, James Barrie, and the Brontës were just some of the authors these scholars discussed during the BBF session on October 27, 2012. Listen to the audio of the panel to hear how books were used as instruments of power in the 19th century, how Jane Austen continues to engage readers today, and how Barrie's Peter Pan explores questions of our own mortality.This session was sponsored by the British Consulate.

Colleen Fullin's "The Dead and The Drowned" focuses in on a teenaged boy in the aftermath of the drownings of young men in his city. Garrison is shaken by their deaths, but unsettled more profoundly in ways that he only comes to understand--if at all--at the story's end. The reader is in for a powerful conclusion to Fullin's tale, as it touches on the complications of identity, desire, and sexuality.

In "Assailing Otherness," Katrina Grigg-Saito confronts the ultimate food taboo and survives to tell the tale.  Grigg-Saito's essay explores the limits different cultures draw around what's approved and what's beyond the pale. Her experience of learning to cook in Laos begins with the desire to get to the heart of a culture and ends with a discovery about her own assumptions and willingness to set them aside.

"You Get What You Get" offers an intense story of a woman confronted with her husband's deteriorating mental health.  A trip to the remote suburbs to see a house her husband has purchased brings Jennifer face to face with the dangers in her own home. At the heart of Lisa Mecham's story are detailed character studies of people in crisis.

In Sandra Jensen's "War", a young South African girl wrestles with her emerging sexuality and with the political, familial, and cultural conflicts taking place around her. Learning about the Boer War in school, Kimberly thinks instead of the more immediate aggression in her mother's relationship with her boyfriend. Attraction and repulsion, love and violence, mingle in this rich story.

Over the course of a slightly chaotic supper, Kay, the protagonist of Vicky Grut's short story "Debts" confronts her social, financial, and emotional obligations. The story is populated by vivid characters--a strange boy who keeps washing Kay's husband's car, Kay's unruly daughter, surprise guests with complicated histories--all of whom come together in a sometimes clashing interaction. Grut brings the story's various elements together in a thoughtful and moving conclusion.

A plate of eggs, a map, and a greasy table top inspire a new journey for the young narrator of Elizabeth O'Brien's "Over Easy". O'Brien's vivid and concise writing, and her evocative reading performance, give the listener a strong sense of the narrator's need to just go.