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The Craft of Listening: The Story’s Unique Scale
By Koss A few years ago, while in deep grief, I became aware that stories and poems reside in my body, not just in my head. A poem might wake me up in the form of a low thrum in the night. Sometimes every beat of the poem would come before the words arrived–as a…
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Found Missing
Fiction by Coleman Bigelow It was windy that day, and I remember the chill I couldn’t shake. We were headed to the falls, a favorite hangout above town and the perfect spot to get high. My bike wobbled and I struggled to pedal forward on that county road. Every time the wind gusted, I felt…
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These Things Fall Into My Mind
By Ilyn Welch Adult coloring and maze books bore me. I forgot how to crochet. I don’t have a personal watercraft in my life, and never will at my age. Perhaps I’m a ho-hum individual. But five to seven days a week, I am fortunate enough to walk two dogs during the quietest time of…
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Story Crafting Below the Surface
By Jolene McIlwain Once upon a time, I could literally see inside people. Before I tried and failed at my dream of becoming a published poet, before I wrote a novel, and a group of short stories (the former sits unpublished in a drawer and the latter was published last year as the story collection,…
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What’s Left
Fiction by Laura Leigh Morris A woman in a mask cups the baby’s butt, grips her neck. She holds the squirming purple body above the sterile drape, says, “Congratulations, Mom and Dad.” She says the baby’s lungs are full of fluid, that they need to keep an eye on her. I watch, helpless, as they…
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Our Roots and Where They Grow
A Review of Sara Johnson Allen’s Down Here We Come Up by Ryleigh Wann How do you create healthy boundaries when that boundary involves blood? What about when you feel so ingrained in a place that your roots can’t help but rot with it? How do you pull yourself out of a syrupy summer in…
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Ladies First
Creative Nonfiction by Leighton Schreyer He. Tall. Mid-forties or so. Dressed in a slick navy suit, pink dress shirt, floral tie. Striped socks—Burberry or Balenciaga or Prada, something fancy—revealing themselves with each pump of the pedal. Briefcase strapped in the bike basket in lieu of the child he (almost certainly) doesn’t have. Can’t have, looking…
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Yarns: On Making Perfectionism Work for You
By Meagan Lucas I hate it when editors publish themselves—especially in anthologies, but that’s another column—and I vowed when I started this mag that I wasn’t going to do that. But then I had an idea for this essay, and I thought a craft column isn’t as self-indulgent as publishing my own fiction, right? Plus,…
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There is a Season
Fiction by Emily Addis All of my children turned into rocks. Just plain rocks. You’d hardly notice them. I mean, you wouldn’t notice them; I would, because I’m their mother. Lucky for them, too, because if anyone else had found them they’d still be outside right now, getting run over by cars and pissed on…