Eric Boyd lives in Pittsburgh and is working on his first short story collection, Brownfields. His writing has been published by The Masters Review, Guernica, The Missouri Review, PEN America Journal, Bridge Eight, Cheap Pop, Burrow Press Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and Luna Luna Magazine, among others. He appeared in Prison Noir (Akashic Books), an anthology edited by Joyce Carol Oates, as well as Words Without Walls (Trinity University Press).
Boyd is a winner of Slice Magazine's Bridging the Gap award, the PEN Prison Writing Award, and has been selected for Bartleby Snopes Story of the Month. In the summer of 2014 he was selected to attend the Tin House writing workshop; the story he wrote while there became a semifinalist for H.E. Francis Award. He is the editor of The Pittsburgh Anthology (Belt Publishing) and a guest-editor for The James Franco Review; he was a longtime advising editor for tNY Press. Eric Boyd’s personal tumblr page is a ‘spotlighted’ blog on that website, highlighting his daily six word stories/poems, as well as longer works.

FICTION

Ash Wednesday

By ERIC BOYD

“Everybody knew the McDonald’s at the Waterfront was selling theraflu stamp bags, and I guess I’d heard how bad it was for you”