Emily Van Kley
A Brief History of Scandal

Emily Van Kley - A Brief History of Scandal

Poetry
Emily Van Kley is a queer poet and circus artist currently based in Olympia, Washington. Her poetry collections are The Cold and the Rust (2018), winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, and… Read more »
Caroline Bock
At Pickles Pub in Baltimore

Caroline Bock - At Pickles Pub in Baltimore

Creative Nonfiction
Caroline Bock is the author of THE OTHER BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, a workplace love story, inspired by her two-decade career at AMC, Bravo, IFC, and IFC Films (on sale June 2, 2026, Regal House Publishing).… Read more »
Gordon Brown
Death of a Hotel Manager

Gordon Brown - Death of a Hotel Manager

Fiction
Gordon Brown grew up in the deserts of Syria and now lives in the deserts of Nevada. Since arriving in the New World, his work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Weird Horror… Read more »
Emily Kingery
December

Emily Kingery - December

Poetry
Emily Kingery is the author of Invasives (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her work appears widely in journals and has been selected for multiple honors and awards. She teaches creative writing and… Read more »
Julian Shen
Ducks

Julian Shen - Ducks

Fiction
Julian Shen is a writer from Berkeley, California with roots in China and Argentina. He is an MFA candidate in fiction at Oregon State University. His work is forthcoming in Wigleaf. Read more »
Annie Marhefka
El Sendero

Annie Marhefka - El Sendero

Creative Nonfiction
Annie Marhefka is a writer in Baltimore, Maryland; she is the recipient of the 2024 Eunice Williams Nonfiction Prize, has been featured on The Slowdown Show, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and… Read more »
Meg McManama
Holy Pregnancy Sonnet I

Meg McManama - Holy Pregnancy Sonnet I

Poetry
Meg McManama is a PhD candidate at the University of North Texas and has an MFA from Brigham Young University. Her pieces are published or forthcoming in Poets.org, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, Western… Read more »
Dana Holley Maloney
How the Rich Live

Dana Holley Maloney - How the Rich Live

Poetry
Dana Holley Maloney is a native New Jerseyan who lives and writes in midcoast Maine. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, The Lake, Paterson Literary… Read more »
Yuan Jiang
PagerDuty Against the End of the World

Yuan Jiang - PagerDuty Against the End of the World

Fiction
Yuan Jiang is a tax accountant based in Atlanta. He previously lived in Baltimore. He writes fiction in English and Chinese about the immigrant experience in America, particularly the suspended state… Read more »
Patrick Whitfill
Pericarditis

Patrick Whitfill - Pericarditis

Poetry
Patrick Whitfill has work appearing in Boston Review, the Pushcart Prize, Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and many other journals. He lives and teaches in South Carolina. Read more »
Betty Ruddy
Searching for the Fifth Sense

Betty Ruddy - Searching for the Fifth Sense

Creative Nonfiction
Betty Ruddy’s essays have appeared in, among other places, The Fourth Genre and The Journal, and two of her essays were named Notables by Best American Essays. She has an MFA in Writing and… Read more »
Zach Eaton
Sunday

Zach Eaton - Sunday

Poetry
Zach Eaton is a poet and fiction writer from Texas. He will earn an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University in May 2026. Read more »
Jane Hilberry
The Better of Him

Jane Hilberry - The Better of Him

Poetry
Jane Hilberry is recently retired from Colorado College, where she took great pleasure in teaching Creative Writing and Creativity classes and helped to develop an undergraduate program in Creativity… Read more »
Amie Whittemore
The Starling and the Callery

Amie Whittemore - The Starling and the Callery

Poetry
Amie Whittemore is the author of four poetry collections, most recently the chapbook Hesitation Waltz (Midwest Writing Center). She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and… Read more »
Amy Halloran
Vegetable Kingdom

Amy Halloran - Vegetable Kingdom

Creative Nonfiction
Amy Halloran is a writer and teacher who lives in Troy, New York. Her love for food, and for the people who grow and make it, led her to write a book about the revival of regional grain… Read more »

A Brief History of Scandal

Emily Van Kley

Once, the zipper buzzed with the smut of invention: metal slit slick with discipline falling over itself to advertise the body beneath. Now, closing my raincoat gets no one’s feathers in a fluster. An unzipped fly: kind of germy, a fool’s blunder. We have to snake zippers down the backsides of blouses to imply a lover’s hands halving fabric. We have to extend the zipper bust to hem, sink it in latex, strip away its placket. I like a zipper placed on a bias, which means I am hot and not what you expected. Or that I enjoy geometry. When we were younger, my love and I bought women’s sleeping bags that zipped together, touched some corporate designer thought of us. We were less thought of, then. The bags were called mummies. Joined, they were suggestive and stifling. We’d tangle our legs as night fell but wake straining against separate cinches, arms stuck out side vents, sheltered close in our single garment, reaching away.
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