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Mother/Mutt
Creative Nonfiction by Annie Marhefka Our mother rescued a mutt after we all grew up and left her. She had been abandoned, she said. The mutt had, too. I had escaped to college; my brothers found jobs that afforded their exit, and poof, like ants scattering, my mother joked with a tender smile. I guess…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: Good Grief
By Michaella Thornton Lately, it’s been harder to gather my resolve and joy to bake or write much. I won’t lie; I’ve been struggling through a slow-moving season of pain and endurance, and that’s okay, too. My focus lately has been on: Of trying so hard to remember good enough is great, Rome wasn’t built…
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That Bottle Green Phone Call, 2006
Fiction by Elissa Field It’s expensive to get the phone activated for international roaming but, late after midnight – so late that I have to ask the hotel clerk to unlock the door with the distinct risk I might not be let in again before dawn – I’d got desperate with waiting for news and…
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Biracial in the Pine Barrens
A Review of Davon Loeb’s The In-Betweens By Maud Lavin The In-Betweens (WVUP, 2023) is Davon Loeb’s memoir of growing up as a biracial boy mainly with his Black mother, stepfather, and half siblings in the Pine Barrens, along with some summers in a small town in Alabama with his Black cousins, and infrequent visits…
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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…