Start at the corner of West 84th Street and Columbus Avenue. Kimberly Sterns lives on that block, in an apartment with a view of the avenue. Everything in The Severed City happens within walking distance of it. Real Streets, Real Routes Fiction set in New York often treats the city as a painted backdrop. Names…
Natalie Oliver is 22 years old. She’s from Indiana. She saved up for two years after high school, packed everything she owned, and moved to New York City at twenty to start college. She had never lived anywhere bigger than a midsized town in the Midwest and she took to the city like she had…
Kimberly Sterns is 17 years old. She lives alone in a two bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. She works part time at a GameStop on 86th and Broadway. She goes to high school. She makes her own dinner most nights and waits for her father to come home on weekends. On the surface,…
It’s a Friday evening in autumn. New York City is doing what it always does at that hour. Restaurants are full. Subways are packed. Somewhere over the Hudson, the lights of Newark flicker against a sky that’s just starting to turn cold for the first time since summer. Then at 7:03 PM everything stops. Not…