Quint - Alisa Prude-Hunt
Quint is a surrealist coming-of-age story exploring familial secrets, reluctant inheritance, and codependency set in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood in 2012.
“And when she was in that place, where we miss our mothers beyond the rites of adulthood, she’d slip out a special CD, slip it into the player, and Say A Little Prayer as if it were a curse or spell—just under the breath, real low.”
Bio: Alisa Prude-Hunt was born and raised in NYC and much of her writing centers on the city’s unique regional voices. She is a graphic designer by trade and will graduate from Hunter College’s MFA Program in the spring of 2025. She lives in Queens with her husband and two children.
10,000 Moons Could Never Be Enough - Brenna Two Bears
In "Ten Thousand Moons Could Never Be Enough" our local Navajo nomad searches the dead-infested southwest for her missing wife. With only the knowledge of her homelands and a machete to protect her, Rochelle learns the difference between blood relatives and found family, and finding the will to live.
“What met Cradle’s eyes horrified with its callousness. Body after body of starving and hurt beings. The Fourth World was unrecognizable. Cradle wept and whispered, I will bring the Fifth World. “
Bio: Brenna is Diné, Hočak, and Standing Rock Lakota from Arizona and Wisconsin. They are an award winning writer with publications in Saving Earth Magazine, the Timberline Review, and more forthcoming. Brenna lives in Oregon with her partner and their cat, Gizmo.
The Further - Frances Ogamba
Ikeobi Isaiah has no recollection of his Nigerian roots after a spiritual attack. He raises a family in Minnesota, USA, and navigates the world with the dispositions of a human with their complete faculties. When he gets into a fatal accident, Ikeobi’s true soul returns to his body, leading him to collide with the harsh glare of his life’s history, which has been murky for years.
“Before the car collides with his, before the cacophony of noise vanishes from the world around him, he feels pity for the squirrels being startled off their dreys in the nearby forest. He hears them thudding to the ground in their fright, feels all of startled nature huffing down his neck.”
Bio: Frances Ogamba is a 2024 Jacobson Scholar at the Hawkinson Foundation for Peace and Justice. Her writing has received support from the 2024 Walter H. Judd Travel fellowship, the 2024 COGS Research Grant, and the 2022 College of Liberal Arts fellowship at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Close Relationships With Strangers - Krista Diamond
Close Relationships With Strangers is a modern literary noir about a Las Vegas wildlife photographer who moves to Los Angeles to become a paparazzi photographer and in the process loses his relationships, his morals, and eventually his tether to reality.
“He appears on screens and billboards and bus stop ads and magazine covers in many forms: the spy sliding out of the black car, the lovesick cowboy in the red desert, the soldier reaching for his weapon, blue eyes fixed on the sky. I don’t know what he does in his real life.”
Bio: Krista Diamond‘s essays and fiction have appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Longreads, Hazlitt, HuffPost, Catapult, Joyland, and elsewhere. Her writing has been supported by Bread Loaf and Tin House. She is a PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
That Night at the Jubilee Hotel - Stephanie Ramlogan
One year after a spectacular wedding takes place at the Jubilee Hotel, the narrator, a charismatic spirit who has lived there for about a century, excitedly recounts the mysterious events surrounding that night to a new spirit that he meets wandering around the hallways.
"Some part of the Living does still hear spirits even when they not paying attention. They does hear what they need to hear when they need to hear it. We does keep talking either way."
Bio: Stephanie Ramlogan is a Caribbean writer whose fiction is built around the people, culture and folklore of Trinidad and Tobago. She is the recipient of the 2022 Iowa Review Fiction Award, and the 2020 BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writer's Prize, among others. Stephanie has an MFA in Creative Writing.
Everywhen and the Dark Entanglement - Jan Kaneen
When dark energy seeps from one multiverse into another, twisting and souring cultural narratives, the truth that was always holding everything together starts to degrade and fragment. Can non-binary versions of Margaret Thatcher and that-universe’s female iteration of Schrodinger save their hard-won freedoms from slipping into oblivion?
“27th August 1939 18.31 – the moment that changes everything. Time is short. We’ve only minutes to do this. So when we’re sure there’s no-one in the world as can see, we proper yomp the last one-hundred yards, climbing, climbing quick as we dare, chins down, strides wide and wild, our Sunday-best skirts clinging to our legs in the brisk and blustery hot summer wind.”
Bio: Jan Kaneen writes sometimes prize-winning fictions from her cottage in the Cambridgeshire Fens, the most recent being her Bath prizewinning novella-in-flash, A Learning Curve, published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Her unsettling short story collection, Hostile Environments is forthcoming from Northodox Press in August 25. She blogs at http://jankaneen.com/ and tweets @JanKaneen1
Moreneta - Charisse J. Tubianosa
Moving between Barcelona and Manila, Moreneta is Vicky’s coming of age story. Haunted by the broken relationship with her mother, a harrowing past and a baby ghost, Vicky weaves the present with her mother's memory. Moreneta explores longing and loneliness, and the thin veil sometimes separating mothers and monsters.
"She’d already imagined a baby with light-colored skin, eyes and hair, taking pleasure picturing what would’ve been Carol’s look of disbelief at Vicky’s beautiful mestiza child. Even though up until this morning, she still wasn’t sure about keeping the baby. Or how to tell her family in Manila. Now, these questions have been taken from her, leaving her only—like any good Catholic—with guilt feelings."
Bio: Charisse J. Tubianosa is a writer from Manila now based in Barcelona. She’s an alumna of VONA and the Tin House summer workshops. Her short stories are in Spanglishvoces, Litbreak, Sunspot Lit, and another forthcoming in The Offing. She was a flash fiction finalist for the LISP 2022.
(Middle) Eastern Standard Time - K.D. Walker
(Middle) Eastern Standard Time integrates the embedded narrative and oral folkloric tradition of One Thousand and One Nights with a modern-day narrator, telling her twenties as bedtime stories to her six-year-old daughter. The story begins with Deniz as a 27-year-old Turkish schoolteacher who moves to Manhattan in 1994 to escape an arranged marriage. On the Lower East Side, she works as a movie theater usher, falls deeply in love with American cinema, and eventually loses sense of which of her lives has become most real.
“Wine overflowed, booksellers shared cigarettes and beds with beggars, and men sunbathed on the banks of the Seine as if the world would never not be theirs. I hated that painting. All the women in the frame were only seen from behind, walking away, somehow becoming more defined by their silhouettes, the streets that surrounded them, and the careful memories the men carried of them rather than their near-perfect figures or their strategic goodbyes.”
Bio: K.D. Walker is a Turkish-American and Creole writer. Her writing has been published in the LA Times, Electric Literature, and the Threepenny Review. In 2023, she was chosen as a Tin House Summer Workshop Scholar and PERIPLUS Collective Fellow. Currently, K.D. is an MFA Candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Notre Dame. More of her work can be found at kd-walker.com.
All Our Beautiful Lives - Amara Okolo
All Our Beautiful Lives is a Bildungsroman about twin sisters Nkoli and Nye after they lose their mother to a kerosene explosion and are adopted by their estranged aunt, a nonconformist. Told from Nye’s narrative, the novel details their lives as they manoeuvre grief, friendships, puberty and trust in new environments.
"My mother died by fire on a Tuesday morning. That day, she woke us earlier than usual, at the fourth crow of the cockerel. Our eyes struggled with darkness, recognizing the shape of her shoulders as she pulled away the warmth of the blankets over us, stood up, and walked away."
Bio: Amara Okolo is a Nigerian writer and author of Black Sparkle Romance, Son of Man, and Daughters of Salt. Her works have appeared on Joyland, The Forge Literary, Chestnut Review, A LongHouse, Catapult, WeTransfer. She lives in Maryland where she is finishing up PhD and her novel(s).
The Creation of Audrey - Hope Kokot
The Creation of Audrey centers on a young autistic woman's coming-of-age as she survives childhood sexual abuse, the death of her mother, an abusive relationship, and early motherhood. As she fights for daily survival, she gradually discovers her own identity.
"I never quite became human, but I became visible, which is better. When my titties invaded, my body stopped being mine–but then I had never been mine in the first place."
Bio: Hope Kokot lives in New York City. Her short story "Bill Rainey Park" was a finalist for Pleiades Magazine's Kinder-Crump Award for New Fiction, and she has performed in poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the Bowery Powery Club, and the Busboys & Poets Cafe, among others. She is autistic.
Eardrum - Chelli Riddiough
Shortly into her sophomore year at Brown, Alissa receives a shocking diagnosis: she will be fully Deaf by 22. Eardrum follows Alissa as she loses her hearing, falls in love with the CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) teaching her sign language, and forges an identity away from her parents’ expectations.
"Dr. Hanigan says the term for what I’m doing is pre-grieving. I think that’s a fancy word for what my dad calls being a sad panda: sitting around in my pajamas watching old episodes of Doctor Who and eating ice cream. The problem with eating your feelings is you always run out of food before you run out of feelings."
Bio: Chelli Riddiough received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Minnesota, where she was a College of Liberal Arts Fellow. Her short stories have been published in Esopus and The First Line. She is a shorts programmer for the Twin Cities Film Festival and writes critical film essays for Perisphere, the Trylon Cinema’s blog. She lives in Northeast Minneapolis.
Bushels O’ Fun - David Mills
A worker with a traveling carnival is stunned to learn he has a four-year-old daughter. Rejected long ago by his birth family, he fears he’ll have to choose between the carnival family he’s acquired and a family he didn’t know he’d started.
“The siren song that had lured Boosh into sleep—an electric motor’s low, seductive drone—beckoned from some somewhere dark and far away. He heard it, drifted toward it, and awoke. He saw that he had company now—a woman, standing by the dryer, waiting for her clothes to stop their tumbling.”
Bio: D. G. Mills (he/him) was born and raised outside of Boston and later moved to southern California. He is a husband and father and has been, among other things, a forklift operator, mailman, groundskeeper, RV builder, meatcutter, bartender, college professor, and janitor—but, always, a writer.
Hero - Elizabeth Visser
After a homeless man saves a woman’s life, he becomes a living Rorschach test as politicians, community members and activists each try to use him for their own agendas. Gradually, they discover who he is and what he wants—and it’s not what anyone thinks.
“She forgets the man. There’s no reason to remember. Medium brown hair, not dark, not light; jeans, a plain blue tee-shirt, tennis shoes. Pleasant-enough face; she couldn’t have said, so he must not have ears that stick out or a beak of a nose or a harelip. Average build. Not fat, not thin. Not anything, really.”
Bio: Elizabeth Visser is a journalist turned fiction writer living near Seattle. Her work focuses on the amazing, unexpected ways humans find connection. Currently, she is finishing revisions on a manuscript longlisted in Mslexia’s 2023 Novel Competition.
Black River - Sandy Nietling
For Josie Briggs in 1927, marriage is the key to financial security and respectability. She might even fall in love if she’s lucky. But when her new husband abruptly disappears, she must search for him with the help of his lawless brother. Black River explores the intersections of loyalty and sacrifice.
“It’s the kind of brilliantly lit night my mother used to call washed because that was her first frame of reference for things. Was it washed and clean, or was it dirty? This was to help her figure out how much work something was going to be for her, but once you start looking at the world that way, all manner of objects and people sort themselves into a clean pile and a dirty pile.”
Bio: Sandy Nietling is a writer and communications professional based in West Michigan. Her short stories have appeared in Blackbird, Quarter After Eight, and New Ohio Review. She is currently at work on two novels.
ALL ANIMALS - Megan Ritchie
ALL ANIMALS follows failed child actress Anna Walker, who's spent her childhood caring for her mother and pretending to be other people. But when Anna learns her mother is dying, she's forced to decide what new role she'll play.
"I flew on a plane for fourteen hours, stopping in New Jersey and sleeping with my cheek pressed against the window. For the entire flight a toddler wailed beside me, and when its parents murmured kind words in its ears, I pretended they were talking to me."
Bio: Megan Ritchie has been published in Denver Quarterly, Southern Indiana Review, HAD, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. Her work has previously been shortlisted in Northwest Review and Carve's fiction contests. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami, where she was a Michener Fellow.
Prints - Juliana Rappaport
When jaded art history PhD, Louise Rowe is asked to retrieve a suitcase for an irresistible stranger whom she meets at an Oakland warehouse rave, she jumps at the chance. Sent to India from California on this lucrative errand, she is keen to erase her financial debts, and change the bleak future she envisions as a low paid adjunct professor. When she arrives at her destination in Southern India, the stranger, her new benefactor, intercepts her and calls off the assignment. Her manic attraction for him collides with her common sense as they are pulled into a web of interlocking narratives in this cross-century, cross-cultural story of love, lust, art, and a touch of the uncanny. It turns out family secrets are buried in more places than just suitcases.
“The boy presented me with a tiny piece of tissue-thin, light blue paper with his thumbprint pressed onto it in indigo-colored ink. I treasured it as I would a small pet, keeping the paper in a ceramic bowl by my bedside. I decided I would love this boy forever. By the end of 6th grade, I discovered he was handing out his prints to many girls in the class, a different fingerprint for each girl.”
Bio: Juliana Rappaport's fiction has appeared in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts and JMWW. She was a Crossfield Fellow at Cuttyhunk Writer’s Residency, and is a current participant in the One Story writer’s conference in NYC. She lives in Berkeley, CA, where, while raising a teenager, she writes fiction, works as a somatic psychotherapist, and gardens obsessively. She can often be found pulling weeds long after dusk.
Alignment - Prachi Kamble
Alignment is about the coming of age of a brown woman in North America. It examines themes of identity, displacement, race, class, and femininity. It is interested in the ideas of danger, fear, and the complexities of travel, all through the lens of marginalization.
“Kavi fights her design. In broken sleep she dreams of rest. She dreams of dreams. The vertebrae in her back reposition themselves into a question mark. Calcifying into potential permanence.”
Bio: Prachi Kamble was born in India and raised in Rome, Kuala Lumpur, Abu Dhabi, and Canada. She has been published in Five South Journal, The Indianapolis Review, South Carolina Review and Weave, a Kundiman zine. She was shortlisted for the 2024 Disquiet International Literary Prize. She is completing her MFA at New York University.
It's Different When They're Yours - Joanna Theiss
Rebecca knows the girl is lab-grown and artificially-intelligent, yet she can't help loving Deirdre as if she were her own daughter. When Rebecca wants to keep Deirdre after the radical experiment in mothering ends, the founder forces her to choose: Deirdre, or his biological child which Rebecca has just conceived.
“Her stomach twisted at the closeness of the girl, who looked so much like Rebecca had at seven. She was so vulnerable, knees poking out from her thin legs, uneven terry cloth shorts, eyes skittering between the van, the handler, and the house. The handler checked her signature, nodded, and walked back to the van, leaving the daughter on Rebecca’s doorstep, fiddling with a plastic bracelet on her skinny wrist.”
Bio: Joanna Theiss is a writer living in Washington, DC. Her writing has appeared in Chautauqua, Milk Candy Review, Peatsmoke, Best Microfiction, and elsewhere. Previously, Joanna worked as an attorney, practicing international trade and criminal defense. Read her reviews and check out the collages she makes from tiny squares at www.joannatheiss.com.
The Graveyard Shift - Kori L.M. Hughes
Combining social commentary and satire with the horror-comedy genre, The Graveyard Shift is a novel told in connected short stories. Darryl Reeves, descendant of legendary U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves, works as a vampire hunter while getting into various misadventures across the American South.
"Before he could sit down, a server set up a place for him at the bar with the menu placemat and a cutlery set on top of a napkin. Her nametag read ‘Lucy’ in big, bold letters with ‘Assistant Manager’ in smaller print underneath her name. As Darryl took her in, she reminded him of Dolly Parton, if Dolly didn’t have Dolly Parton money."
Bio: Kori L. M. Hughes received her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was named a Felipe DeAlba Fellow and a Clive Scholar. She lives in New York City with her husband and cat.
The Gold Before Us - Megan Lui
The Gold Before Us is a novel-slash-cookbook that follows Em, a Chinese-American Wall Street rat-racer living in COVID-19 pandemic-stricken NYC, after she discovers that she has both cancer and the power to time-travel to meet her Transcontinental Railroad, Angel Island and WWII ancestors, each of whom have powers of their own.
"Louis loved pointing out that Rachmaninoff and Lou Gehrig too had simple tombstones nearby, boasting that he could afford for his parents to be able to rub elbows with musical and athletic luminaries in the afterlife, if not during their earthly lives. Maamaa and Yeye rested at the top of the hill, where earth kissed the sky, overlooking a glassy pond, far away from the clang of the MetroNorth below – optimal feng shui. After summiting the top of the hill, Em’s family would fall out of the minivan, one by one, and then tiptoe gently around neighboring graves, whispering sorry or ng goi, bowing their heads each time, before arriving at Maamaa and Yeye’s grave.”
Bio: A native New Yorker, Megan Lui (she/her) is a sixth-generation Chinese-American writer and food photographer, and a daughter of immigrants. She previously worked on Wall Street and has an AB in History of Art from Princeton. She has received support from Tin House and The Kenyon Review, and has been a finalist for fellowships from One Story and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
The Travels of Ian Farr - Julianne Cox
After an accident, Ian Farr falls into a coma, whence he travels into dreams and faces off with a gifted-yet-twisted adversary who is hijacking unconscious human minds during sleep. With help from his deceased father—Ian prevails—and rejoins his awakening body, bringing with him a message of hope and love.
“Even as the projectile left its chamber, in the penultimate moment before the bullet entered his temple, in that same splintering and exact final second as a living man; he was shocked by the sight of it, yet overcome by the need to laugh. His reflection. It had winked.”
Bio: Julianne Cox resides in the American Southwest, with a background in advertising, copywriting, and editing. She’s a contributing writer to inMaricopa magazine and author of two children’s books and a YA novel. When she isn’t writing, Julianne is a private caregiver, and enjoys sculpting, travel, and her two crazy dogs.
Exhibition - Zen Ren
The age of realistic androids is over, their culture nearly lost. Alex, a museum curator, and Ellie, a once-famous actress, quarrel while creating an exhibition about android culture. In trying to preserve their kind, they also uncover secrets from their long-tormented friendship that started many years ago in android finishing school.
“Ellie strode around the stage like a queen surveying newly captured territory. I said the first line and found that the stage suited me: my voice rang out clear, I could - unlike my classmates - modulate myself to sound loud but not shrill, commanding but not false. Ellie matched my tenor; we circled each other on stage, movement flowed through me with a grace I thought was only the domain of the elite Swiss schools, and my swelling confidence pushed her into more complex gestures, flourishes in tone, the fire of her performance burning away all my concerns about the outside world, the real world.”
Bio: Zen Ren is a queer Chinese American writer whose work is published/forthcoming in New England Review, Electric Literature, swamp pink, and more. They are a ’23 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, won Nimrod’s ’23 New Writer Award, and have been nominated for a Pushcart. Say hi at zenrenwrites.com or @zenbyhand!