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
Recent Fiction
Paper Nests, by Laurel Miram—Pale yellow pads are best. They contrast well with black Sharpies. No one can miss a bumblebee.
Recent Poetry
Three Prose Poems, by Kathleen Rooney—This day could use the excitement of receiving a surprise package. Even better if that package reads THIS SIDE UP.
Recent CNF
Thank You, Girls!, by Dvora Wolff Rabino—I’m culling needless items from kitchen, baths, and linen closets. I’m curating friendships. Now it’s your turn to go.
Nevermore
by Katie Manning
“And you know what the raven says.”
Joshua
by Jordana Jacobs
Inside the ovaries of my husband’s grandmother, Sylvie, resided an egg the size of a grain of sand that would have been Hannah, my brilliant and accomplished mother-in-law.
On Learning That My Daughter’s Rapist Has Been Taught to Write a Poem
by Katharyn Howd Machan
about his sadness. / About how the moon hung full / that morning, every morning
When You Are Invisible, You Can Say Anything
by Valentina Gnup
At sixty-one, I count and recount my remaining summers.
Zilla, 2015
by Jeff Somers
When she signed the lease and moved her stuff into the place, she knew she was leaning into a decline she’d begun some time before.
Wapiti Nocturne
by Douglas W. Milliken
Mum died in the last days of October, leaving—among other things—a lot of fall-time chores incomplete.
When We Believed the World Wouldn’t End
by Benjamin Cutler
After the final harvest, the forecast / called for freezing temperatures / and the end of this winsome world.
Palloncino
by Lauren Lynn Matheny
Whatever the color, there had been a balloon. There had been a boy. And there had been a fall.
Ode to a Bee on the Small of Your Back
by Partridge Boswell
Blind to what tickles the delta of nerves there / you rub a humming with the back of your hand
Five Short Poems
by Simon Perchik
These gravestones left stranded / warped from sunrises and drift / —they need paint, tides, a hull
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
