2026 Long Story Release

We’re so proud to release the IHLR 2026 Long Story: "Building 2667: A Story" by Adam Straus.

At the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in the Mojave Desert, a barracks building watches over nine young trainees in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment: Maza, Erickson, Gillespie, Chang, Washington, Finn, Gutierrez, Warren, and “Jumper.” We learn how these boys ended up enlisting, what they face during their deployments, what happens when they come home. There are beautiful moments reminiscent of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carry.

But this story is different, so different. While the boys in the battalion learn combat skills, including methods of domicide—how to enter and destroy villages, industrial sites, homes—the barracks that house them at the MCAGCC have their own lives. In fact, Barracks 2667 is the narrator of this story, and he includes other barracks as main characters alongside the servicemen:  Building 1953 (who was demolished to make way for Building 2667 but still speaks through her remnants), Building 2615 (who whistles because he has a loose cinderblock), Building 1554 (who thinks she’s the Empire State Building), Building 1441 (who doles out spiritual advice like a guru), and even the narrator’s father (who was a warehouse on Chicago’s Navy Pier and also housed servicemen). Ultimately, Building 2667 mocks the nearby mountains for just standing there and looking pretty as he ponders taking action, using his plumbing, electricity, walls, or roof to change the course of everyone’s lives, including his own.

It’s the most innovative short fiction we’ve ever published in the Long Story series, and we are thrilled to share it with our readers—

Adam Straus is s a Marine veteran. The author of Remedial Action (University of Nevada Press, forthcoming 2027), his writing has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, HAD, Best Small Fictions 2024, and elsewhere. Adam lives in Philadelphia, with his wife.

Learn more about the IHLR Long Story and our next submission period!