Second place winner for The Jennie Hackman Memorial Award for Short Fiction (2022) The thing about living long enough to see the aftermath (living longer than she ever thought she would), is that Josie doesn’t quite know what to do with herself anymore. There was always something before. Something to be done, something to run… More “Haunted Ghosts” by Katya Lyashenko
CW: Death, Domestic abuse This is what is most important: the ache in scraped knees. The crawdads scuttling among river rocks. The groan of pipes in your cracked kitchen sink. Night stealing hours. Ponds like meters-wide tide pools. Mud stealing hours. The leak in your bedroom ceiling, the water damage creeping outward around it. Threat… More “Moon-Stain and Crawdad Eater” by Charlie M. Case
CW: Illness, Death It came to me on the sixth night of my sickness, when the suffering had ceased to be new. I had been lulled into those familiar throes which, now that I was accustomed to them, deceived me into thinking that they were kinder. In came something—and I was so ill I thought… More “Knell Inevitable” by Charlie M. Case
Contest Winner for the Edwin Way Teale Award for Nature Writing (2022) I moved to Oregon during the dreadful forest fires of 2020. I moved out of Oregon during the even more dreadful forest fires of 2021. I came and went in smoke so thick that nobody noticed. As my final act in Oregon before… More “When Treading Water Above a Bottomless Pit” by John Guillemette Jr.
Contest winner for The Long River Review Graduate Award (2022) “What would you like to know about yourself?” This was what my neighbor asked me when I took my seat. He was wearing a black suit and had a thick laptop resting on his thighs. I asked him what he meant. But he wasn’t talking… More “The Ostrava Line” by Liam Kelsey
Kevin Cox on graduating in a disconnected world.… More Reconciling Graduation in a Disconnected World
By Ryan Amato Staying home all day, avoiding contact with others, having less obligations than usual: This is the writer’s dream. Or, at least, it should be. For some reason, the idea of sitting down to write something just hasn’t crossed my mind, despite having nothing but free time to write. Instead of finishing that… More Why I now have all the free time to write, yet I don’t do it
By Lili Fishman It’s finally happened. After two weeks of UConn students wondering what the university was going to do with spring break and COVID-19 coinciding at the same time, we finally have an answer. After spring break, UConn is switching to online classes for at least two weeks to minimize possibility of exposure. As… More Why Online English Classes (Probably) Won’t Work
Sometimes to see, you need to listen first. For almost all of the projects I would create before 2016, I ran into a wall over and over again: For some reason, I couldn’t visualize anything about my stories the way I needed to. It wasn’t because I didn’t have a vivid imagination or that my… More Writing With Sound: Making playlists for your stories
The Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Fiction, Third Place (2017) I don’t take the school bus, I don’t drive, and because mom doesn’t get home from work until four most of the time, I don’t ask her for a ride. But if I take the 509 toward Whitney Avenue at 6:15, I usually get to… More Constance By Jeremiah Dennehy (2017)