Genre: Fiction

Recently, the New Yorker published an article by Julian Lucas about the devastation experienced when losing digital data and the experts who are able to repair and recover data for victims. Steve Burgess, a “data-recovery pioneer,” talks about how the value of a person’s data is dependent on whether or not they have it. “Once they have it, it really wasn’t worth anything,” he says. “But, if they don’t have it, it’s worth an arm and a leg and their children.” Write a short story that launches from the starting point of a character experiencing an unfortunate mishap with their phone or computer, resulting in the loss of irreplaceable photos, texts, audio files, writing, and contact information. Were the lost items something that they took for granted before? What is your character willing to do to retrieve the data?

In Sarah Wang’s debut novel, New Skin (Little, Brown, 2026), a young woman named Linli Feng is drawn back to her hometown to tend to her mother in the aftermath of her latest string of disastrous plastic surgeries. Through the eyes of Linli, the environment around her reflects components of her own reality, full of signs of destruction and disrepair, including grass that is “as brown and dry as any in Los Angeles,” a fruitless fig tree that has been damaged after her mother backs her car into it, and a thicket of bougainvillea with “deep magenta bracts” dying and falling to her feet. Write a short story in which the setting displays characteristics that reveal both the mindset of your main character and themes you wish to interrogate in your narrative. How might elements that may conventionally be seen as positive or beautiful take on hints of menace or darkness through the story’s landscape?