MADAM OF THE BOUGAINVILLEA - ABA AMISSAH ASIBON (fiction)
Madam of the Bougainvillea centers on the Koomsons, a multiracial family whose idyllic American lives are upended and embroiled in scandal when their patriarch decides to relocate to his native Ghana to pursue politics.
Bio: Aba Amissah Asibon is a Ghanaian public health consultant and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Guernica, Adda Stories and the Johannesburg Review of Books.
I’M HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS - ANDY DEHNART (cnf)
I’m Here to Make Friends is a hybrid of memoir, cultural criticism, and anxiety that explores how reality television and the Internet simultaneously strengthened and shattered human relationships. It follows my journey from closeted queer teenager to reality TV critic leaving the safety of my couch in search of connection.
“I’d spent most of my three decades on earth staring at screens, watching other real people. Somehow my anxiety and I ended up here, in South America, inside one of the TV shows that changed my life, standing in front of Jeff Probst, one of the people I’d criticized online. I tried to remember that this was all just a mockery, a sham, and whatever he said, I was not a torch about to be snuffed out, fire instantly replaced by wisps of smoke.”
Bio: Andy Dehnart is a writer and teacher who obsessively and critically covers reality TV, focusing on how it’s made and what it means. He holds an M.F.A. from Bennington and lives in Florida with his husband and tuxedo cat. Find him at andydehnart.com and reality blurred.
CITY OF COLOUR - C.H. WEIHMANN (fiction)
City of Colour begins when the enigmatic Meiko Ayakami bequeaths a gold pocket watch to the Met in her will. The watch hides a tiny painting in its case—and as curator Michelle Galbraith will learn, it also hides the truth about late artist Avi Vilner.
“Beneath the familiar concrete chaos of New York City in November, another skyline shimmers: the exultant domes and spires of Avi’s St. Petersburg. That vibrant city, painted inside the watch-cover, transfigured under the artist’s brush and vanished in the heat of decades gone—it beats beneath the streets of Michelle’s Manhattan, it pulses under the thin skin of her reality like something moving underwater, like a warm life stirring in eggshell.”
Bio: C. H. Weihmann is a past winner of the Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition, and she has been longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and Novel Slices novel excerpt contest. Her work has appeared in various publications. She likes learning languages, visiting art galleries, and stacking books precariously.
THE ART OF PERMANENCE - TAYLOR HOUGHTON (fiction)
The Art of Permanence explores the lives, work, and rivalry of Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot in their race to bring photography to the world in 1830s France and England.
“The clatter of plates and glassware. The pop of a cork. Fragments of conversation culminating in an inescapable din. These are the peripheral reminders of others, but Daguerre takes comfort in the fact that no one pays him any mind at his back corner table. He drinks the cheapest beer available - it is in no way his preference.”
Bio: Taylor Houghton holds a B.A. and an M.F.A. in Writing, both obtained at the University of Victoria. She writes historical fiction.
FAMILY PORTRAITS - CHRISTIAN HANSEN (fiction)
Set in a single year in Seattle in 1970, Family Portraits tells the story of a family unraveling, when after a tumultuous holiday both parents suddenly abandon each other and their children, forcing the children to figure out what to do to survive.
“When Peter woke up his pet monkey was dead.
Course that’s not the whole story. Flour and rice and smeared margarine all over the kitchen, along with strewn oatmeal and Cheerios and long streaks of chocolate and the last two pieces of Grams blackberry pie—they were part of the monkey’s story too. So were all of Peter’s missing baby rats. So was Christmas Eve two and a half weeks ago, when our father brought into the living room a big box covered with a sheet as we were nearly done opening our presents.”
Bio: Christian Hansen is a graduate of the University of Washington and studied in the MFA program at Columbia University, His fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Iowa Review, and others. Recently he returned to writing as a therapeutic exercise after the loss of two brothers to cancer, and Family Portraits is the novelized memorial of that journey.
VIDEO VILLAGE - MARS GIROLIMON (fiction)
A trans man fresh out of film school, Walker, befriends an ensemble of LGBT up-and-comers in Los Angeles who are being exploited for their identities on a reality TV show—even after production wraps.
“When Andre tells me his callback went well, I say I can't wait to be his date at the Oscars. I don't hesitate. I'm supportive exactly how a good boyfriend would be supportive, and I'm almost sure he can't tell that behind this two-way mirror reflecting his enthusiasm back onto him is a monster willing his demise.”
Bio: Mars Girolimon (@MarsGirolimon) is a writer, hobbyist, and master’s student living in New Hampshire with their wife and two dogs. Girolimon’s fiction is forthcoming in the North American Review and appears in X-R-A-Y.
A SUITABLE OCCUPATION - ANU KANDIKUPPA (fiction)
A Suitable Occupation examines ambition, competition, work, and the future of work through the story of a father-son duo who follow diverging paths into a future in which automation has replaced all jobs and people no longer need to work for a living. Is this utopia?
"While [his mother] was away, Atulya’s father took care of him. Sharp at 3:30 PM, Mr. Alladi arrived at Spaulding Middle School, parked his battered blue Corolla, the seats coated with dust and crumbs, got out, and waited at the outskirts of the group of parents, his skin mottled in the sunlight like that of a nocturnal creature, a brown briefcase dangling from his fingers like part of his arm."
Bio: Anu Kandikuppa worked as an economics consultant for many years before she began to write. Her stories and essays have appeared in Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, and other journals. Anu lives in Boston. Her website is www.anukandikuppa.com.
RED GIRL JUMPING - KIM MERRILL (cnf)
Red Girl Jumping is narrated by Red Girl, a shard of incest memory trapped in Kimberly’s mind. When Kimberly, on her fiftieth birthday, burnsher diaries and family letters, Red Girl sees her chance to offer Kimberly peace. She turns into flying ash --- but where can memory go?
“I am memory, this I know. I’m also ashy words.”
Bio: Kim is a playwright whose plays have been produced regionally and off-off-Broadway, with support from the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, Playwrights First Award, and publication by Dramatists Play Service. Red Girl Jumping received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
GO HELP YOURSELF - DANIEL POPE (fiction)
The only thing preventing Corbin from smoking weed and binge-eating himself to death is Geraldine Moore, self-help guru and Corbin's overbearing mother, who moves in with him after he gets fired to help him "get back on [his] feet." Meanwhile, Corbin is pursued and attacked by crows everywhere he goes.
"I had been so cute back then. What happened? In the picture I stared awestruck through bright hazel eyes just above the camera, at the photographer. The person who was always just out of frame, pulling the strings. That’s what had happened, of course: my mother. My mother had ruined me."
Bio: Daniel Pope is a writer and musician from Seattle. His work has been published in Narrative Magazine and is forthcoming from the Bellevue Literary Review. He has an M.F.A. from Rutgers-Newark. As a drummer, he has gone on two tours with the punk band Peach Kelli Pop. He is working on his first novel.
THE HOUSE ON FARRAGUT STREET - JEHANE SHARAH (fiction)
The House on Farragut Street is a gothic novella about a woman whose appearance transforms after she inherits a mysterious, decaying house. But as her beauty grows, she realises that her new appearance comes with strings attached, and that the house has certain expectations of her.
"Since moving into the house on Farragut Street, I have become more beautiful. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, that perhaps the strange green walls reflected in a particularly flattering sort of way. But then I realized it was I who had changed."
Bio: Jehane Sharah is an Australian writer who lives in America, where she is pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland, and currently works as a graduate teaching assistant.
Jennifer Slee
PERFECT FIFTH - JENNIFER SLEE & JESSICA SLEE (fiction)
A young woman realizes her dream to play alongside the renowned Andromeda Quartet. Her fantasy cracks the more she is absorbed into their toxic friend group as their newest concerto, commissioned for an arts festival centered around history's angriest women, influences and amplifies their destructive behavior to dizzying heights.
Jessica Slee
“That was the theme of our performance—the decision, the act, the trial, done in the typical three-movement structure. A Parisian bathtub brought several thousand miles into the center of Buffalo. It was the sort of thing, we were repeatedly made aware, that could define the rest of our careers.”
Bio: Identical twins Jennifer Slee and Jessica Slee studied Creative Writing at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They were longlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger 2022, are Claymore Award finalists, and their work appears in Writer's Digest and The Saturday Evening Post. For more, visit www.sleesquared.com.
THE VIRGIN MARTYRS - DAVID RIORDAN (fiction)
Two students sneak into their high school on the anniversary of the mysterious death of a beloved teacher. According to local legend, this is when they can summon the teacher’s ghost and learn the truth of what happened. In their search for answers, they encounter the unexpected and discover even deeper mysteries that will connect them irrevocably to each other and to the past.
“Precisely at midnight, the veil between worlds being thin at that hour, the supplicant had to lie on the spot where the teacher’s body was found. Then she had to recite the prayer of St. Agnes and utter the name of the teacher three times. Only then, if that young woman were pure of heart, would the spirit of the departed speak.”
Bio: David Riordan’s work has appeared in The Boston Review, The Laurel Review, The Review and elsewhere. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife, two sons, and two dogs.
THE GRIP - HEIDI MARJAMÄKI (fiction)
Ten years ago young Lucas Farnsby confessed to murdering his best friend shortly before taking his own life. Now, his parents are finally ready to tell the truth about what happened. While unravelling the family’s secrets, journalist Inari Kincaid must confront the possibility that something supernatural haunts their old house.
“Despite the dimensions of the room the air here feels oddly muffled, as if nothing usually stirs through it, and I find it hard to imagine my hosts bringing up two children in this house: it seems the absolute antithesis to childhood.”
Bio: Heidi Marjamäki is a writer with a love of all things gothic and suspenseful. Originally from Finland, she studied English in Scotland and worked in Oxford and London before moving to Berlin. Her writing was shortlisted in San Francisco Writers’ Conference 2021 contest and Mslexia’s First Novella Prize in 2019.
WALKING ON WALLS - THELMA MCGOUGH (fiction)
Walking on Walls is dangerous—we risk injury from a fall especially in childhood, if a dad fails to hold onto your hand. The trick to survival is unearthing the inner strength to climb back up and dare to balance again… and again. McGough’s memoir charts the search for control over her own life.
“Political correctness is not a phrase we know, so we laugh hysterically at everything John Lennon says and does—unless of course one happens to be the recipient of his mockery.”
Bio: Thelma McGough is an award-winning artist and former TV Producer from Liverpool. The TV series she produced won a BAFTA. She graduated with an MFA aged 73 and then began to write. Twice, she’s been long listed for the Pen Factor Prize. Two research libraries are negotiating to acquire her archive.
PROLOGUE: GET UP ON THE DOWN STROKE… - DAVIDA DELORES KILGORE (fiction)
Kyle, a naïve, Black woman writer, travels to Paris to relive what she had always perceived to be the glamorous years of writers such as James Baldwin and Jessie Redmon Fauset. The Myth Makers exposes what she finds there now, as she, too, becomes a maker of myth.
“Yes, this was the summer when, without moving an inch away from my face, Doneta asked me, Kyle, will you always be my best friend, do you love me? Doneta looked so pretty asking me what she already knew, her hair, her bangs, like mine, glistening with Blue Magic; she knew ...”
Bio: Davida Kilgore’s collection of short stories, Last Summer, was a 1988 winner of the Minnesota Voices Project Competition. She was the editor of The Palm of My Heart: Poetry by African American Children. Her work has been read on Broadway through the Selected Shorts program and published nationally and internationally.
DISTRICT ZERO - TOM SANDERS (fiction)
District Zero is a surreal novel set in Saigon, telling the story of a young white man who moves to SE Asia in new and unexpected ways.
“The beetle fell onto its back, almost sliced in two, continued the Austrian, and its guts, its, uh, viscera, began to leak out. As he watched, it looked around, then with its front legs, began to drag its insides into its mouth. In its hunger for food, it did not realise that it was killing itself, eating its own body. After that, the entomologist said he never thought of them like humans again.”
Bio: Tom’s works include Forever Ends Tonight, an apocalyptic comic play, Night Shift, a multi-generational memoir, and short stories including France, Charmed, and The Snail Burden. Tom has performed at events across the world, and is currently working on District Zero, a novel set in Saigon.
UNACCEPTABLE RISK: A MEMOIR OF MARRIAGE AND TAINTED BLOOD - KATHY MACKAY (cnf)
In 1986, Kathy learns Dave, a hemophiliac, contracted HIV from his prescribed blood product. Optimistic, she marries her asymptomatic boyfriend. When repressed trauma threatens their marriage, they grow and thrive—until Dave dies. Throughout the relationship, Kathy weaves in the corporate and individual failings that allowed drug companies to kill.
“If I’d known the truth about why my husband was dying—not the physical cause, but the larger reasons it had come to this—I’d have taken pictures of him on his deathbed.”
Bio: Kathy MacKay, a former photojournalist turned writer, is currently revising Unacceptable Risk: A Memoir of Marriage and Tainted Blood. As a photographer, she worked on staff at The Nashua Telegraph and The Boston Globe and has received to Individual Artist Fellowships from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.
THE GREAT RED SPOT - BRIDGETTE SHADE (fiction)
A storm and a story, The Great Red Spot is a literary coming-of-age novel, a book with two beginnings, a space where all a dead girl has to do to breathe again is make it to the other side of the storm.
“By the end of freshman year, we understood young love resulted in death. That happiness is fatal but the boy must have been asleep the day the rest of us watched Romeo follow love’s true course because the girl was gone, yet he walked among us, still.”
Bio: Bridgette Shade teaches writing with an emphasis on social justice. Her story collection was a Finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and her work has appeared in several publications. She is a TEDx Talker, a blogger, and a dog walker. Say hello at bridgetteshade.com.
THE PETTICOAT INSPECTORS - GINA L. MULLIGAN (fiction)
In 1903, a young Jewish woman breaks from her Orthodox roots to becomes one of the first female U.S. immigration inspectors. But when she discovers a sex trafficking ring, she must convince a hardened prostitute to embrace the bonds of sisterhood to save the women and ultimately each other.
“He had to pick one quickly in order to catch his evening ship to America. As long as she was under fifteen it didn’t matter if she was pretty. Passable, at least. No, clean, he thought. Clean, at the very least.”
Bio: Gina L. Mulligan is the author of Remember the Ladies, From Across the Room, and Dear Friend. Her short fiction has appeared in Paper Brigade and performed at Stories on Stage. In Fall 2022, Gina will begin her MA in Creative Writing Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia.
COUNT ON ME - ANN CAVLOVIC (fiction)
Count on Me exposes what can go wrong in a family when ageing parents grow frail and debts from the past have gone unsettled. When Tia’s brother takes over their parents’ house, bank account, and medical decisions with disastrous consequences, she confronts how money and love entangle in her family.
"And each time he accused me of caring only about things, not people, I chased after the rope he was swinging, like a stupid, distractible dog."
Bio: Ann Cavlovic’s fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Canadian literary magazines and newspapers such as The Fiddlehead, PRISM international, Grain, and The Globe and Mail. She has received multiple prizes and fellowships for her work, including a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Find her at: www.anncavlovic.com and @anncavlovic on twitter & instagram.