Our Summer 2021 Issue is Live
by Barbara Westwood Diehl
We are pleased to present our Summer 2021 issue with poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction by:
Jeffrey Bean
David Bergman
Stephen Cramer
Vishnas R. Gaitonde
Robin Gow
Claire Kortyna
Kelley J. P. Lindberg
Jarid McCarthy
James McKean
Chido Muchemwa
Patricia Patterson
Lis Sanchez
Seher Fatema Vora
Jieyan Wang
Yunya Yang
Congratulations to our Summer Contest Winners!
Here they are, with comments from our final judge, W. Todd Kaneko:
Flash Fiction: "The Daughters" by Patricia Patterson
“The lovely voice and play with language in this flash fiction is what propels the story through all the singing and crying towards the lament and love for Mamá at the end. What a beautiful piece with these voices, singular and in unison, all telling us what they need after the breakup.”
Flash Creative Nonfiction: "How the Body Contains Flight" by Jieyan Wang
“I love the way this short essay uses the birds and the cage to transform the essay's focus from youth to age, from hope to contemplation. It's a beautiful shifting of the metaphor to move us at the end, both in heads and hearts.”
Prose Poem: "The Best Day of Middle School" by Jeffrey Bean
“There is something thrilling and absurd and ridiculously fun about all the mayhem in this prose poem. It builds until the poem turns and shifts its attention to the children's bodies and the teacher and everything else that is about to go wrong. It's fun and somber at the same time, which is the poem's magic."
Thank you, Todd!
We hope that you’ll enjoy the work of this issue’s contributors, and we wish all our readers a great summer.