“The Fox and the Tree and the Thunder” by Tomiko Breland, the honorable mention in our inaugural Prize for New Narratives, seems, at first glance, like a fairy tale. But the true story plays out in the margins, in disagreements between the author of the solicited fairy tale and the collection’s editor over the editor’s desire to sanitize the story. To preserve the structure of the piece, we are presenting the story as an embedded PDF. Navigate between pages with the Next Page or Previous Page buttons at the top left corner of the embed window. You can download the story here to read on your own device.
Tomiko Breland is a writer, editor, and director of publications based in Monterey, California. She holds a BA in English from Stanford University and an MA in fiction writing from The Johns Hopkins University. She is a winner of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, and her writing has appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, Day One, and other publications. She also currently serves as a senior reader for Ploughshares.