LYS GRANIER <br> The only time I saw the woods in the snow. I threw a handful of road gravel in the tiny stream every time I crossed the bridge. The wood where I pictured my dad reincarnated as a fox....

ALT: Charlie Day Conspiracy: Pepe Silvia

Cities often take belongings — including important documents and irreplaceable mementos — when they conduct sweeps of homeless encampments. ProPublica gave notecards to people across the country so th...

Regarding April 21, 2022, the hardest day of my life. I climb in the passenger seat of the rental car, parked outside the crematorium. My partner follows the GPS to a parking lot by the Mediterrane…

They call them residual items. My task is to record, photograph and label every item the unclaimed dead leave behind. Each file arrives in a brown envelope stamped Housing Bureau - Unclaimed. The i...

Submitting is highly addictive. Tracking submission is also highly addictive. So much so that I had to stop tracking Submittable, Duotrope, and the Submission Grinder from my phone for a bit (but t…

The Ex-Puritan began in 2007 as The Puritan Literary Magazine, an independently funded print journal dedicated to publishing fiction, essays, and interviews in Ottawa, Ontario, and was sold in…

Read Lys Granier's essay "Palimpsest" in Issue 72: Winter 2026 of The Ex-Puritan, then check out the Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence!