On January 13th, The Disagreement began a new year with “I kept telling myself you’re okay; you’re not that bad” and packed the back room at The HiFi Bar with a crowd eager to hear four stories of characters facing denial and uncertainty. Alexandra Kleeman’s piece gave us a rocky relationship and dairy farms and in Allie Werner’s “Antarctica” we met an artist whose choices – mistakes, they may be called – have led to a lonely residency in a very hostile environment to draw diatoms that live in the cold water there. With prose reminiscent of Elaine Dundy, Marianne McKey’s dreamy narrator has more responsibilities to her cat than her job and more than one candidate at the bar with which to fall in love. She asked us to consider “if this is how it’s always been.” Rumaan Alaam’s “Turn Down” took us inside the mind of a frequent traveler and hotel frequenter (what happens in hotel rooms and ballrooms, might just stay there).

We’re back in March with our anniversary reading when we’ll bring back some of our favorite readers from 2014, including Brittany Goss, Tobias Carroll, Miles Klee, Dustin Luke Nelson, and more with their interpretation of the theme “What business do you have to cry here?”

(From top to bottom, readers: Allie Werner, Rumaan Alaam, Marianne McKey, Alexandra Kleeman)