Sundays

by Emma Copley Eisenberg, Halimah Marcus (Foreword)

For a story that’s about sex six days a week, there’s something prayer-like, even Biblical, about Emma Copley Eisenberg’s “Sundays.” Jeffrey, a scientist, is Mondays and Thursdays, Lamya, a Muslim marine biologist, is Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and polyamorous Beth, who lives in North Carolina with her primary partner, is Fridays and Saturdays. Six days, three different people to love or desire. “Sundays” is a story for which it feels imperative to read every word, and that rewards second and third readings. Eisenberg writes like Grace Paley for 2017, with sentences that are at once compact and airy, assertions that are also questions, and politics that are radical yet tenderly cultivated.

17 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 12, 2017

About the author

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the nationally bestselling author of the novel Housemates, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize, as well as the nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl, a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice and a finalist for an Edgar Award and an Anthony Award. She’s received fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Bread Loaf, Tin House, The Millay Colony and others, and her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in such publications as Granta, The Paris Review, The Believer, Esquire, the Virginia Quarterly Review, The New Republic, Harpers Bazaar, and The Cut. She lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts. Her next book of fiction, Fat Swim, will be published on April 28, 2026.

Reviews

[Aaron Homsher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contradiction

Can we live in contradiction? For a moment, this story takes you there. To either observe or submerse. To live in another humans skin for a week, with lasting impressions of sexual encounters. Emma is an excellent writer. My path to this book started on Medium, through which I discovered Electric-Literature.