Shane Cashman’s stories have appeared in The Atlantic, BBC Travel, Penthouse, Catapult, Narratively, VICE, Salon, The Los Angeles Review of Books Blog, Monkeybicycle, The Observer, Vol.1 Brooklyn, Fiction Southeast, Fatherly, The Common, and elsewhere.

Only God Is an Atheist |  Medium

“I’ve known about the two horns growing out of the top of my head since about middle school. The one on the right comes to a sharper point than the other. My pediatrician, as far as I could tell, didn’t seem too worried or repulsed. Just a misshapen skull. Nothing a good haircut can’t disguise. As long as you can hide your horns, you can blend right in with the gen pop.”

The Onions and Mastodons of The Drowned Lands |  BBC Travel

“She thinks about the glacial lakes that formed as the ice receded. How Pine Island, a valley within a valley, became one of those lakes. She thinks about how mastodons must have fed off the very land on which she would eventually learn to farm. She considers it magical. The occasional mastodon skull rising up out of the soft earth only adds to the illusion that Pine Island is both modern day and prehistoric.”

My Son and the NICU at the Center of the Universe |  Fatherly Magazine

“There are five other babies in five other HALOs. A chair sits at the side of each. Parents huddle. It looks like we’re in an aquarium. I overhear someone say there’s the same amount of salt in amniotic fluid as in the sea. I do not know yet that this is not true, but this myth that the womb and the sea are in some way connected, gives me strange solace.”

My Backyard was a Battlefield |  Fatherly Magazine

“For the better part of my childhood I was under the impression that my family was the subject of some sort of military experiment. The nuclear family living alone in the woods. No neighbors whatsoever — save for the livestock my parents managed on the farm behind our house and the occasional band of coyotes.”

How Mary Poppins Broke My Heart |  The Los Angeles Review of Books Blog

“[Mary Poppins] Returns seems afraid to deviate from the straightforward, to partake in whim, to just float wherever the wind takes you. The result is a distinct feeling of being condescended to — the film does the one thing Mary Poppins promises to never do: Explain. Neither the characters nor the audience ever really get the chance to interpret the magic for themselves. The narrative constantly winks at its audience to remind us where and when the real becomes the imagined.”

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