It’s the school’s loss, not Emma’s
Stephen King’s 20 rules for writers
The best of Writer Beware: 2022 in review
2023 entries into the public domain
Would you use these words?
The making of a six-figure author


The Dreamer Returns Home
by Robert S. King
This was not my house the day / it grew smaller over my shoulder. / The family my blind rage left would not / know me now, nor would I know more / than who they were.

Redemption
by Michael O’Keefe
I want you to know two little known facts about me. One: I don’t like name-dropping. Hate it. Loathe it. Abhor it. Really. And I don’t like name-droppers either.

Visitation Rights
by Dino Parenti
He’d pick me up from Mama’s early Saturday while she slept, always waiting in his truck down the street and staring down the sun while gnashing on a spicebush twig.

Accidents
by Midge Raymond
We’re having the same argument before my sister and her kids come over for a barbecue. I’m running out of reasons he hasn’t heard before, so I tell him, “This morning I saw a woman at Stop & Shop with a bullet on her key chain.”

Piano
by Joyce Sutphen
Somehow, it keeps itself in tune. / Each key remembers its name / and loves its neighbors— / black and white.

Us
by Raymond Philip Asaph
A social researcher, she had actually been affiliated with Harvard University, part of the team which had issued an important, ignored report on the mental health of the American people.

Midnight Recital
by Kurt Lovelace
Kneeling to untangle my dog’s leg from its leash, / how did I get here, walking a pit bull in the dark under the sour leaves of drought resistant Texas oaks?

The Cope Paradigm
by Jim Davis
But boy, I’ll tell ya, a moment / in the woodshed with Kathleen would shake the rust / from the long-handled lopper and the pruning saw— / she’ll make you think this whole thing’s worth doing, / and worth doing right.

The Hollow
by Kathy Fish
Their mother works hard, but the girls are unkempt and secretive, given to a layered, sarcastic wit.

This Meatless Heaven
by Anna Mantzaris
Shiitake Happens. Soy to the World. The Girl From Echinacea. The slogans were printed on heavy hemp T-shirts with vegetable dyes.