Victoria Redel Take a title for your story that is an abstraction (e.g. Grief, Love, Bliss) and construct a story that seemingly has nothing to do with the abstraction but earns the title in a unexpected manner. Victoria Redel has…
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Susan Tepper Prompt: Smoke billows thick and black from the chimney of the deserted house. Susan Tepper has been a writer for twenty years. Her sixth book, a fabulist linked-fiction, is set in 19th Century Russia and titled ‘dear Petrov.’
Rick Moody Write a story with no modifiers (I.e., no adjectives, no adverbs). Rick Moody is the award-winning author of twelve books of fiction and memoir, including The Ice Storm, The Black Veil, and Purple America. He…
Lore Segal I want to define habit as that which it is easier to keep doing than to not do. In my twenties I spent a summer with friends in Connecticut, a pain in everybody’s neck because I was never…
When I was young, engulfed in a hazy half-life of drug and alcohol- induced close calls, I never imagined that I would live to see children or grandchildren. I could more readily see my spirit sinking away from an emaciated…
If only I could find my glasses I could read the morning paper. Now that I have found my spectacles I am unable to read the fine print. Last week, Dr. Evans said the eye drops for the glaucoma and…
In this lingering light of a late winter against a coral covered sky. I have passed forty-two age my mother was when she died. Once so hot headed I…
When you go dancing do persons other than friends ask you to dance? Strangling words pierced lips where love, passion and need once lived. My gray crown counting each subtle cruelty. Long ago in my lover’s arms I convinced myself…
I lay awake Thoughts of times past The sound of your footsteps pacing The sanctuary of hot coffee Silver of your hair glistening under a single kitchen bulb Silver the age of restless Awakened long before dawn Silver doesn’t need…
My mother loses the tip of her nose to melanoma. She loses her last sweetheart Art when his daughter forced him to move across the country. She loses her friends one by one as they died. She loses her swim…