Richard Bausch is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the novels Playhouse (Knopf, 2023), Hello to the Cannibals, Thanksgiving Night, and Peace, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the story collections Someone to Watch Over Me and Something Is Out There, a finalist for the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In addition, he was the 2012 winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story. Bausch has also received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. A devoted teacher, he is a professor at Chapman University in Orange, California.

Photograph by Jebb Harris.

Isolation

by Richard Bausch

She stands at the bedroom window, her robe clutched tight at her throat, watching dawn rise over the trees and the river, and the towering shadow-shapes of the buildings beyond. The street below is empty, all the cars parked, nothing moving. It looks like an abandoned city. It’s been twenty-nine days, and still, each morning the sight of her neighborhood from this height is a shock.

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