Touchstone – A Cancer Diary, 2014
Susmita Bhattacharya (First published in The University of Winchester Writers’ Festival – The Best of 2016) Writer’s Note: I wrote this essay […]
"You can make anything by writing." — CS Lewis
"A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world." — Susan Sontag
"To survive, you must tell stories." — Umberto Eco
"It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing." — Truman Capote
"I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them." — Haruki Murakami
Susmita Bhattacharya (First published in The University of Winchester Writers’ Festival – The Best of 2016) Writer’s Note: I wrote this essay […]
Caroline Bock Writer’s Note: These works were jumpstarted in an asynchronous workshop ‘Less is More’ run by Sarah Freligh, a master teacher […]
Mary Byrne Writer’s Note: Travelling to Ireland from France could sometimes cause culture shock. This piece started with my father’s reaction to […]
Lindz McLeod Writer’s Note: Near my home, there’s a high tunnel where pigeons nest; whenever I pass through it, I wondered whether […]
Mary Byrne Writer’s Note: Small Town came from observations when visiting my old home town irregularly over the years, noting the changes, […]
Mary Byrne Writer’s Note: Delete water was provoked by a very vivid memory of myself and a few student friends huddled over […]
Mary Byrne Writer’s Note: I set out to write a flash about a quiet teenager who seems more mature than her parents’ […]
Sarah McPherson Pristine snowfall; the familiar made unfamiliar by winter. The early morning light touches each heap and hollow lightly. She is […]
Frances Gapper Now it’s not safe to go out, they order bottles of guaranteed healthy air and crave injections of fresh young […]
Marie Little Jennifer carefully tightens the last tiny wingnut, a turn for a word: serendipity, coruscate, hullabaloo. The press is beginning to […]
Amanda Saint A pair of scuffed Kicker boots (size 5) —love-heart patterned socks tucked neatly inside, rainbow laces tied together to make […]
Colleen Kearney Rich Pam doesn’t plan to lie. It just slips out. Imagined life made real. The girl at work, her face […]
Peter Burns Sixth day standing at this bus stop staring across at him in the bookies, he comes out plunging his […]
Kate Axeford Saints It started with the cows. Jacob saw them straight-lining it out of Hobson’s farm as if they sensed […]
Jeanine Skowronski 1. We dig holes, because Wren insists there’s treasure buried in this dirt. We unearth silver slips of paper, two […]
Nathan Xie He exclaims things like nodders, or yagoo, or hrmhrm, and the first time folks ask him what he means, […]
Cath Barton He was here the next morning, my brother. Sitting at my kitchen table, spooning marmalade onto his toast. […]
Sherri Turner I have been waiting for you, Mr. Fox. I knew you would come when you were ready, that wild […]
Mary Byrne Writer’s Note: This flash piece was inspired by a very real woman who used to sit at my tram stop, […]
J. Dianne Dotson Writer’s Note: This story bounds ahead of a real-life terrifying encounter on a mountaintop in East Tennessee many years […]
Max Hipp Writer’s Note: I’d been thinking about how isolating love feels when it goes wrong and how marriages crack along childhood […]
Sherri Turner Annie will wake in the morning later than usual. She will have a hangover that she doesn’t remember getting. […]
Shipra Agarwal Writer’s Note: It’s been seventy-five years since the British Raj ended, but its remnants live on in sections of Indian […]
Deborah Zafer Writer’s Note: I am fascinated by the lost Jewish East End in London. My grandparents (and those of many British […]
Christine Collinson Writer’s Note: I was listening to a podcast on birds through history when I first came across ‘Climmers’ (or Climbers). […]
Susmita Bhattacharya Writer’s Note: In 2016, I started a Facebook Group with a few of my friends who, like me, had just […]
Emily Devane Writer’s Note: This piece started with a voice, and a feeling: I am looking for the key to the drawer […]
Lori Sambol Brody Writer’s Note: I set out to write a flash novella about a high school theater kid (Julia) navigating her […]
Bri Gonzalez Writer’s Note: My collection-in-progress, currently titled A Wellness Check, inspects how pop culture, like DC’s Batman, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, […]
Stephanie King Writer’s Note: This is part of a series I call “Monologues,” a loose collection of those really voicey flash pieces […]
Sage Ravenwood Writer’s Note: On writing these poems, ‘Once We Were Kids’ is based on an actual childhood memory. I wanted to […]
Vicky Macdonald Harris No longer the resort capris of Laura Petrie dancing past her husband forever flat on the floor; she espousing […]
Anthony D’Aries Don’t tell your four-year-old son how Marvin Gaye died. Unless you want to answer questions about fathers and guns and […]
Eleonora Balsano Fresh blood is the colour of Pinot Noir, bright red and translucent. I’ve never said this to the […]
Hattie Jean Hayes I finally dream of the cathedral. The air is stiff for a storm. I find you at the end […]
Ann Gelder At first there were three deaths: two big deaths and a small death. These deaths were well-mannered. They always […]
Lee Potts I worked for your mother one summer digging. Setting roots tangled up in soil from some other place into holes […]
Rosie Garland My mother lives in a house full of gravestones. Every morning, she vacuums around their beds and washes their […]
Ashley Espinoza My dad shows me an entire photo album of my mom pregnant with me. It’s weird, my dad has never […]
Tyler James Russell You tell yourself you aren’t doing anything, not really, nothing strictly wrong. This is just how things are, and […]
Tyler James Russell If you laid them out fingertip to fingertip like rows of paper dolls the girls would cover the lower […]
Madeleine Pelletier Grandmother’s kitchen is a gathering place. Women turn their masks inside out, cluster round cooking pots, and offer prayers to […]
Evelynn Black the artist: the first person to set out a boundary stone, or make a mark –Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand […]
Ailing Zhou She walks into a café by the lower end of the Hudson to check off a box the front is […]
Edward Barnfield In the morning, there’s a hole where the house used to be. The kitchen, where we drank tea and talked […]
Emma Lee As the others settle into the end-of-term going-through-the-motions of set exercises, I’m marked as different. The maths teacher tells me […]
Janna Miller Countess Herzinga was the first to study the transmutable properties of eggshells as applied to light and sound. Her […]
Janna Miller Nazi ghost houses roam the countryside, setting up bars and brothels. Come in, come in, they say. You do not […]
Maeve Reilly We all have to eat Mr Buzzard we all have to twist sideways, eyes down, hovering to get the best […]
Anne Daly A turlough blooms each winter at the bottom of our road. It used to be my road, when I was […]