The best of Writer Beware: 2021 in review
We’ve lost Joan Didion
JK just won’t leave it alone
Vampire Chronicles author Anne Rice has died
The most important skill is failure
New imprint, Winning Team Publishing, launched by Trump acolytes
Rocket Night
by Alexander Weinstein
It was Rocket Night at our daughter’s elementary school, the night when parents, students, and administrators gather to place the least-liked child in a rocket and shoot him into the stars.
Dragging Raven Lake
by Kevin Couture
The men waited on the shore while Susan, (whose son they searched for), made coffee on the tailgate of a half-ton.
Superman
by Emile DeWeaver
A mother-of-pearl mirror-stand, rolled rugs from Damascus, and other brick-a-brac from when I went through my I’m-gay-but-proud-to-be-Syrian bullshit fill the shadows in my garage.
Orbiting, Day 271
by Bradley Potts
“There is a 2.43% probability of survival. How would you like to proceed, Jay?” Blue Jay, flutter and fly, away from the crows. That gloating, hateful blue engulfs my tiny window.
Puddles Like Pillows
by Suzanne Conboy-Hill
Things began disappearing round about March. Just little things—a newspaper left on a bench, or a sandwich wrapper—and not blown away or tumbled into a corner, just gone.
Columbus Road
by David Buchanan
It got to the point that I just didn’t want the other guys to even see her. Sharing—a tent, a cockpit, a shower—gets old during a deployment, and I wished she would stay away.
Counting
by Jodi Barnes
Often she dreams she doesn’t get into her dead boyfriend’s car. She dances solo in her stupor and calls her mother who’d promised, “I’ll pick you up; no questions asked.”
Three Bedrooms in New Jersey
by Tina Barry
One autumn, a neighbor removed the hanging seats from his daughter’s swing set and trussed a deer he had shot to the top bar. I could smell it as I lay in bed.
Roadtrip
by Jane Flett
I lean forward to your ear, touch my lips to the point where the hair curls over your lobe, and I wonder about falling inside. I purse them like a kiss and I whisper road trip.
A True-Begotten Father
By Steve Edwards
I see him on a cold blue February night: He steps onto the back porch to drop a garbage sack by the bin and my mother pushes the door shut behind him, turns the lock.
It all began around a campfire…
Beautiful language
is meant to be heard as well as read, and in fact words were vocalized eons before they were ever committed to clay or parchment. Storytelling began around campfires. We seek prose and poetry that continue the tradition.
Contributor Spotlight:
Difficult Joy
by Brian Glaser
Open Contests
Lascaux Vol 8
by Stephen Parrish, with the editors of The Lascaux Review
