After several months of too-quiet work at his first job in Tennessee, a young man finds himself inches from unexpected violence.

Following a breakup, a woman trapped in a nine-to-five office job becomes depressed and begins to consider suicide.

A ceramics instructor at summer camp makes a connection with an outcast boy and allows him to stay past class in the studio, against his boss's orders.

A slice of grim parts of life

A woman tries to convince her husband to quit his exhausting job as a traveling salesman. She reflects on the impossibility of having everything that she wants.

In contemporary times, a fifteen-year-old creative writing whiz is sent to a gifted creatives summer camp in Massachusetts, where he meets a young male trombonist. As the two become friends and the writer gets to know the trombonist’s family and their troubles, he turns the trombonist and his dying sister into novel characters. Everything changes when the trombonist discovers the writer’s manuscript.

Through a series of letters in her notebook, an adolescent girl documents her bizarre and often uncomfortable experience at "wife camp," and explores patriarchal gender norms and marital expectations.

For six straight years, Jack’s parents have forgotten to pick him up at the end of summer camp, leaving him stranded there year-round. But this summer, Jack’s dragon egg, a childhood gift from his grandmother, is finally going to hatch. While the egg offers Jack a chance at escape, it also comes between him and Nancy, his only friend.

When her co-worker returns pregnant and happy from a year of travel, a seventh grade English teacher reflects on her dissatisfaction with her own life and her longing for decisiveness.

To earn enough money for college, a high school graduate takes a grueling factory job. He expects his only takeaway from the work to be a paycheck, but a mysterious coworker teaches him about the world and his place in it.