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.
America
by Katherine Riegel
I never dreamt of you but of your parts: / my flatland home, the mountains my mother loved, / beach where I could look out and see only not-you.
Dispatches From the Backseat of the Last Honest Service Taxi in Beirut
by Sara Saab
From Hamra to Bliss St, we’ll list the loves we’ve thrown in the sea.
Yellow Paper
by Amanda Kabak
Now that Kate was safely out of the way—silenced permanently in a corner plot with a view of the freeway—the pedigreed vultures swooped in.
Turbulence
by Maggie Smith
The sky shakes us / like a shoe with a stone inside. / Even the smallest stone hurts.
Mr. Chips and the Mango-Tango Mother Ship
by Alice Hatcher
Marylou was breaking it off with the human race once and for all, leaving the whole miserable lot for good, and this time for real.
If I Have a Daughter
by April Ford
If I could have a daughter, / it would be my life goal to make sure she never—not in a million years ever— / confused one kind of touch for another.
Improv
by Roy White
Let’s make a wedding photo, you and I. / I’m blind and you weren’t there, but between us / we can do this.
The Flying Dutchman
by Annette Gendler
February 3, 1946. Rain pounded the railcar’s roof. Karl felt as if inside a drum. A stuffy drum, smelling of wet wool and unwashed bodies.
Cheerleaders Practicing in Eveleth MN
by David Salner
In the North Country, there are blues so perfect / you want to tear your heart out to be alive / and sober.
Boys’ Life/Rough Frontiers
by Douglas W. Milliken
The only work he could find was at the truckers’ paradise on the north side of town where the main drag reverts into a numbered highway.
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
