Gabo Prize Winner
The Grammar of Survival
by Nabhan Kraishi
She left the tent the way a shadow loosens itself from the body at dusk—quietly, without farewell.
The canvas flap shivered behind her and then fell still. Fidda Abu Naeem did not turn back. The sheep crowded together in their small pen, their breaths rising in faint white clouds against the cooling air of the late afternoon. Before her stretched three kilometers of uneven hills to the village of al-Mughayyir, north of Ramallah.
Young Adult
Rearranging the Stars
by Barb DeMoney
Having a plan has always been my strong suit. I need a schedule and a routine to survive. I wake up at 6:37 a.m. every morning.
I have an illuminated star chart on my bedroom ceiling, and every night, I trace the constellations with my finger, naming them in my head, like old friends.
Diana Woods Prize Winner
The Question I Couldn’t Ask
by Bethany Bruno
I didn’t worry at first.
I was just tired, the kind of tired people warn you about when you’re pregnant. The kind that comes with knowing smiles, jokes about second trimesters, and the soft implication that your body has its own plans and you need to relax into them.
But this was different.
Fiction
The First Wild Axolotl
by E Ce Miller
It is during the fourth month of rain that the axolotl arrives. It is not ordinary. An ordinary axolotl will have black pinhead eyes, unblinking, ringed with a nuclear neon glow. This axolotl’s eyes are blue, gray-flecked, framed by a fringe of lashes. They blink: seeing, unseeing; seeing, unseeing.
I recognize my daughter immediately.
Lunch Special
Tenderness and Terror—the Making of GRIME: An Interview with Thea Matthews
Interviewed by Mahru Elahi
Thea Matthews’ second poetry collection, GRIME, is part of City Lights Books’ Spotlight Poetry Series and was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of their Most Anticipated Poetry Books for Fall 2025. Writing in conversation with collections such as Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric as well as Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler, Matthews writes dramatic monologues to engage with and subvert US culture’s dependency on racialized violence. The poems of GRIME are risky and tender, exploring dependency and resistance, a commitment to movement, and a sticky awareness that geography is not freedom.
Flash Prose
Liquid Gold
by Catherine Squires
The nurse trundled in with the breast pump as I floundered to maneuver my torso into an upright position. My legs and hips were inoperative, still numb from the epidural and flaccid from three months of strict bed rest. She insisted I start pumping right away, spewing a gush of reasons at me: You’ve got to pump out that first batch of milk—that is the liquid gold! All the antibodies and things to get those babies healthy! Yours will be able to drop feed right away. You’re lucky!
Interview
Catching Lightning When It Strikes with Ariana Benson
Interviewed by Angela M. Franklin
Ariana Benson (she/they) is a Southern Black, award-winning eco-poet from Norfolk, Virginia. Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press, 2023) is her debut collection of poetry, which has won several prestigious awards. She is a recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award (2025), the Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (2024), Cave Canem Poetry Prize (2022), Furious Flower Poetry Prize, and Porter House Review Poetry Prize and a National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize finalist (2023). In 2021, she won the Graybeal-Gowen Award for Virginia Poets. Her poetry has been published in leading, top-tier journals such as World Literature Today, Kenyon Review, and others.
