Written by: Sophie Wallis Buckner Winner of the 2025 Edwin Way Teale Award for Nature Writing The experience of the body as part of the self is a fundamental aspect of self-consciousness. Neuroscientists have recently begun to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying this sense of body ownership. This research…raises fundamental…
Category: Fiction
Eleven Things You Don’t Do
Written by: Jenna Ulizio Winner of The Edward R. and Frances Schreiber Collins Literary Prize When you leave, don’t make a sound. Getting out of the Painted Lady is the test. How do you want to be seen in the city tonight? Or, how do you not want to be…
A Requiem for the Endling
Written by: Lucy Lyttle Third Place Winner of the Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Short Fiction An endling is the last known individual of a species or subspecies. Once the endling dies, the species becomes extinct. […] Booming Ben, a solitary heath hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido), was last seen 11…
Letter from 1968
Written by: Karen Lau Second Place Winner of The Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Short Fiction “Mom, I’m at the state police barracks in Stafford Springs. I need you to come get me. Please.” My voice wavered on the last word as I held the telephone to my ear. She…
Gretel
Written by: Grace Carver First Place Winner of The Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Short Fiction The land was starved. And so, its people starved with it. The winter had been harsh, the fields suffocatingly white and uninhabitable, the hulking evergreens that surrounded the village heavy with ice. Gretel swore…
Newton Considers the Still Life
By Charlie M. Case Winner of The Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Short Fiction (1st) Some kind of sweet thing takes hold of you in the late summer. It’s not much. You take it for nostalgia—standing in the pick-your-own orchard, your family and best friend flitting about selecting perfect…
The Cardinal Girl
By Sarah Kelly Winner of The Edward R. and Frances Schreiber Collins Literary Awards (Prose) There was a cardinal who used to perch in the ash tree next to my apartment building. I could look out my window in the morning and see it as I made another ration of…
First Motel
By Krista Mitchell Winner of The Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Short Fiction (3rd Place) The First Motel Off the Highway Bethlehem, NH. August 1956. She held a hand to her forehead to shield her bloodshot eyes as she turned off the highway, the windshield glittering with flecks of…
“Chasing Midnight” by Sarah Moynihan
Midnight is such a tantalizing hour, the birth of a new day, the next twenty-four hours blank pages intended to be filled. An hour associated with hope; it’s crazy how easily that same hope can come crashing down in a single minute
“Toys in a Claw Machine” by Connor Gustafson
As I sip my grimy, soiled, defiled, dirty spiced chai with oat milk, a middle-aged couple sitting at the windowsill scratches scratch-off tickets. We are in a New Haven cafe’s conservatory with used books in two of the four walls that are not glass. I surmise their life story based on their outfits