Summer 2020 Issue is Live!
by Barbara Westwood Diehl
Welcome to Our Summer 2020 Issue!
We hope you enjoy the poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction in this issue as much as we do. Please spend some time with them. A number of our contributors provide comments on their work. Recordings, too!
Congratulations to our summer contest winners, also included in this issue:
Cara Lynn Albert, “Telephone” – Flash Fiction
‘The story hooked me immediately with the clever, lyrical, and slightly surrealist ways that the child Nan, who stutters, repeats the sentence in a daily game of telephone with her friends. Then, within just a few paragraphs, the writer throws Nan into a different conundrum all together, and her reaction changes her life. The end of this tight story has us watching Nan as an adult in a dark and disturbing but very satisfying scene for such a short, packed story. This story wins for its deft control of pacing, its superb details, and its lyrical beauty. Nan is a character you get to know like a best friend in about two minutes, and you will remember her forever.’
Ellie Roscher, “Kept Miniature in Size” – Flash Creative Nonfiction
“This piece stood out among a group of very strong flash nonfiction pieces because of how many smaller anecdotes and stories are neatly arranged in such a way so that each can be valued and admired on its own, or you can step back and admire the whole narrative—exactly what is accomplished by the kiku floral displays that underpin the essay. The elements of research and reflection here are exactly what creative nonfiction should do. The non-flower narratives swing from the pressures on female athletes to the murder of a high school friend to a miscarriage, and each links back to the ancient art of kiku in a way that is both beautiful and deeply controlling— again, like kiku. Form and function at its finest.”
Anita Olivia Koester, “Absence Archive” – Prose Poem
“I chose this poem because of how it weaves together a complicated loss, a resonate definition, and a few odd objects that all feed into the peculiar notion of an archive that is about absence, not presence. I applaud this writer for finding a new way to say something new about the time-honored topics of loss, regret, and survivor's guilt. I think the easy temptation in poetry is to linger on an object that we are sure we know the meaning of; this poem shows how to write about what is there, but also what's not there, and more importantly, what can't be there.”
Special thanks to our final judge, Jen Hirt, whose comments on these works are included above.
Peace