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Outsider Perspectives, Insider Narratives: In Defense of Omissions
By Mandira Pattnaik In the Summer of 2020, peak-pandemic times, I received my first writing solicitation. The topic was to write a micro-memoir. I had never written such a thing before, and like the way I am, the challenge itself made me accept the offer. In near impossible times, we had become more nostalgic. With…
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Something About Unconditional Love
Fiction by Steve Passey Can you give Bevan a ride, she asks me? Sure, why not, I say. It’s the July long weekend, and hot even in the early evening shade. It’s the first holiday I have spent with her and her family and in the heat of the day, and over a few beers…
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Can You Come Back If You Never Really Left?
A Review of Steph Post’s A Tree Born Crooked By Justin Lee A Tree Born Crooked centers on James Hart, a man who escaped his hometown of Crystal Springs to attend flight school. He initially manages to make a go of a life of his choosing. A clean slate of sorts. When his new life…
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BlackHawk Blues
Fiction by Damon McKinney Ayâpami(Back roads) I worked my way through the crowded dance floor, passed the old high school heroes, forgotten football stars, and homecoming queens now strapped down to dead-end jobs, house payments, and different baby daddies. The country music, full of twang, grit, and red-blooded patriotism, blared across the bar and rattled…
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Flexing My Creative Muscles: Running from Zombies, My Apple Watch Overlord, & My Health
By Melissa Llanes Brownlee I run. Not fast, not far. I can run 5 to 10 kilometers without dying. If I told my teenage self that I would run by choice in my 40s, she would be laughing her ass off. In 2018, after my yearly health exam in which I got Cs and Ds…
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Boy and Cave and Man and Night
Fiction by Chloe N. Clark At eight o’ clock on a Saturday night, the sky opens up so subtly that no one will notice for a few more hours. It’s just a splash of extra-dark across the night, some stars excised, but they’d been dead for years anyway. When Alex notices it, he thinks it…
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Pulling Free of the Roots
A Review of Eli Cranor’s Ozark Dogs By Wiley Reiver Eli Cranor’s 2022 debut novel Don’t Know Tough rightly garnered impressive critical notice, being among USA Today’s “Best Books of the Year” and the New York Times’ “Best Crime Novels.” In addition, the Mystery Writers of America recently nominated it as a Best First Novel…
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Soundscapes: Abiding with Birds
By Erin Calabria It is a clear, mild day in October, my first time home in nearly three years. All the leaves are glowing, suspended in translucent tiers of colored light, just on the brink of letting go. My brother turns off the road, parks, then leads the way into the woods. Almost as soon…
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we drink hot chocolate when the world ends
Creative Nonfiction by Jim Almo My phone rang on December 20, 2012. My mother was calling to say goodbye. My aunt had messaged earlier: “Your mother’s batshit crazy. She called in tears to say she’s sorry I won’t be with her in heaven. Her church thinks the ancient Mayan calendar is predicting the end of…