Fran Hawthorne 

      GOLD MEDAL It was only my second speech and debate tournament in high school, and I was coming home with a gold medal in Dramatic Interpretation and a silver in Extemp. Finally, the frizzy-haired nerd who never got asked to dance was a star. My...

Cath Holland

    THE DAY WE GOT THE NEWS Let’s say we have that afternoon again. Itchy for autumn. Me in pale orange lipstick and you your best tweed with leather buttons, facts mouthed at us in a room with no room to move. We hold onto thin plastic see-through cups of...

Amelia Wilson

      Mum, Mother and Me: A girl who believes she can see the future using green peppers reflects on her two mothers, a mysterious stain, and a dog she’s sure is pregnant. Mother’s POV I don’t know when it started. First it was one, then three, then...

Steve Akinkuolie

    Cataclysm from the Cup The morning was a treacherous thing. It had arrived in the slow, reluctant way of unpaid debts, carrying the full weight of harmattan’s mischief. The air was dry, brittle, waiting to crack at the first sign of movement. Outside,...

Cheryl Snell

      Thoughts in the Time of Collision I am all hair, glittering with diamond-glass. A forehead streaked with blood, rubies and roses crisscrossing the tangerine flaps of a ripped collar. Ripped skin. The air is blue and then bluer and then green and...