Marlene Olin

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Marlene Olin’s short stories and essays have been published in journals such as the Massachusetts Review, Catapult, PANK, and the Baltimore Review. She is the recipient of both the 2015 Rick Demarinis Fiction Award and the 2018 So to Speak Fiction Prize. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and for inclusion in Best American Short Stories.

  • A photograph of a dog chewing on a toy while laying on a large dog bed

    Things the Puppy Eats

    November 30, 2023 Marlene Olin
    Photo courtesy of the authorWe each safeguard our possessions. Michael buries his pens inside a drawer. Rachel hides her purse. On tiptoes, I lay my watch on the highest shelf. Things the puppy eats:…
  • A photograph of a Chevy Suburban covered in snow

    Old Cars

    May 4, 2023 Marlene Olin
    Photo courtesy of the authorA late winter storm and a decaying Chevy Suburban underscore the emerging fragilities of life in their seventies for a writer and her husband. We bought the Suburb…
  • A photograph of a yellow telephone sitting on a wood table next to a blue couch

    Landlines

    January 17, 2023 Marlene Olin
    Annie Spratt / Unsplash Family news still travels, but not as it once did, when families huddled together over landlines. Though I was only seven, my memories are clear. It was 1960. Chubby…
  • A photograph of a plastic sculpture of a doctor holding a stethoscope up to a doll’s chest as a sibling holds it up

    A Patient Message

    March 2022
    Marlene Olin
    “Doctor and the Doll” by PMillera4 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Patient Message for Dr. Epstein: After an hour of pushing buttons and cursing at my keyboard, I figured out how to set up your pat…
  • A well-organized closet that is open and takes up a whole wall

    A History of Me

    September 27, 2021 Marlene Olin
    Photo by Burgess Milner / Unsplash Winnowing down to essentials during a pandemic, a writer with too much time to think cleans out her closet and immediately regrets letting go of a sweater. We’v…