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


Ecru
by Oak Morse
We were all one beautiful blend / of mama’s love. My brother, / the color of ecru, the other one / sepia, and me, ebony.

Dear Madeleine
by Stephanie Vanderslice
I can tell you this now. Both times I was pregnant, I worried. I doubted my ability to raise a girl.

The Company of Shallow Holes
by Dino Parenti
One unremarkable March day, a man began puncturing random holes in his withered pasture with a post-hole digger.

Love for Sale
by Benjamin Aleshire
I travel around the world and strangers pay me to write poems for them on a typewriter in the street—that’s how I’ve made my living for the last eight years.

There, I Said It
by Tori Malcangio
In the dark, from my twin bed, I listen to Romy and her latest visitor in the sheets.

Crashing
by Alle C. Hall
She was eight and at the beach and she felt like a movie star.

Lunchtime at the Café Buade, Quebec City
by Barbara P. Greenbaum
There is a woman in the booth next to us. / She looks at me as I remove my new hat.

Elegy for a Living Mother
by Renee Agatep
When she finally dies / she’ll meekly ask God why was it all / clattering highchairs, whiskers on stained sinks

Jenner Stones
by David Watts
At Jenner-by-the-Sea we scurry / over boulders to the place / where the breakers bear down

Abeyance
by Rebecca Foust
I made soup tonight, with cabbage, chard / and thyme picked outside our back door.