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Country Craft: Hello, darling.
By Stuart Phillips Our home in the country came complete with grapevines, gnarled roots thick enough you needed two hands to encircle them. These vines had seen things. However, fifteen years of neglect had left them exhausted and sprawling across a rickety system of rusted metal poles. They were, to put it mildly, unkempt. I…
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Heatwave
Nonfiction by Elizabeth Enochs The heat index is 113 when I take my lunch break and even on full blast my car’s AC is no match, and it’s not like I’m unaccustomed to heat — southeast Missouri rarely does “mild;” summers swelter and winters bite — but I’m thinking of those who don’t have AC,…
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Songs Out of Time
A Review of Craig Terlson’s Samurai Bluegrass By Ashley Holloway Samurai Bluegrass, the latest from prolific author Craig Terlson, set to be released in July 2023 by Literary Wanderlust, is an action-packed tale of a time-traveling samurai who finds himself in 1984 Toronto. Combining such disparate things such as samurai and bluegrass in a work…
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The Nitty Gritty:
Sarah Freligh gives us a peek into her new collection By Charlotte Hamrick Often, when I read Sarah Freligh’s fiction, I think THIS is real life. Sarah writes so convincingly and with such relatability that I will often nod my head while reading or exclaim Hell yeah! I have really done this. I was excited…
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One Sheep a Herd Makes
Creative Nonfiction by Kate M. Carey “Get Up. I need help with Snowball.” My mother shook my shoulder. It’s late winter in Ohio. Blowing icy crystals forced the farm animals into the barn. Not the best lambing weather. “C’mon on. Dress warm. It’s almost zero out.” She left my bedroom. I opened an eye to…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: Tourist Eyes
By Michaella Thornton Florida is a myth and an amusement park for its tall tales and figurative language[1]. Astronauts who launched from this place recount the moon smelling like fireworks. A cheesy mini-golf course where the history of swashbuckling pirate queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read is on display at Hole 15. The gatekeeper at…
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Night Shift
Fiction by Katy Haas I’m working the night shift and counting the cigarettes when Marnie stops in. Out of everyone that works at the gas station, I count the cigarettes the fastest, using my thumb and pinky finger to tap the top of the packs as I count them two at a time, but I…
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In Search of Truth and Love
A Review of Dan Leach’s Dead Mediums: Stories By Jon Sokol If you haven’t noticed lately, we seem to be experiencing a bit of a resurgence of the Southern literary short story. In what appears to be utter defiance against the novel-centric publishing industry, a new crop of writers is delivering significant contributions to what…
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Dateline Plot Twists
Fiction by Benjamin Drevlow It was the husband, no, it was the boyfriend, the babydaddy, the ex, the elicit Tinder lover, the hitman one of them hired. No, it was the colleague, the boss, the custodian, the mouth-breathing, pee-smelling tech guy. Probably it was the pimp, it’s always the pimp, no, the drug dealer, the…