Gabo Prize Winner
General Cemetery
Begoña Ugalde, translated by Sam Simon
Throughout Begoña Ugalde’s collection Es lo que hay (It Is What It Is) motherhood takes center stage. The characters grapple with the challenges of caregiving, oftentimes while fighting to maintain their autonomy. In Cementerio General (General Cemetery), these challenges smother the narrator. It’s Halloween and she lays in bed with her husband trying to coax their newborn to sleep. Outside, unruly teenagers shout threats. Upstairs, neighbors howl karaoke. Inside, the infant glues itself to her burning skin.ime. […]
Writing for Young People
Future Memories
Serenity Bricel
My hands slide under the faded floral couch cushions behind Future Memories Thrift Store. I find three hair ties, a now-gray piece of gum, and enough cat hair to create a new tabby. Sweat trickles down my back. My phone dings. I yank the shop-vac hose harder than necessary and flip the switch. “Ava.” […]
Diana Woods Prize Winner
Grief Exercise
by Cat Jones
A few years after my dad dropped dead, he called into an NPR gardening show to talk about some kind of tomato nymph. I should’ve been shocked, hearing his voice crackle over my car radio like that, but I’d already been seeing him around town for years. I passed him in grocery store aisles, he passed me in his car. I saw him through the windows of restaurants and just out of reach in large crowds. So, if anything, I was disappointed to hear him. I hated that show. I thought he’d have better taste. And besides, he was supposed to be in hiding. […]
Fiction
Federal School Safety Act 2029
by Sage Tyrtle
[Content Warning: gun violence, children, bird death]
I was in third grade the year they legalized guns in school. It happened during spring vacation and Mom took me to Staples for school supplies. She said I could get the small pistol with the little blue daisies on it if I promised, promised, to load the dishwasher every day after dinner instead of just when I got reminded. I clutched her arm and swore I’d take out the garbage too. […]
Poetry
The Scrub Jay
by Aaron Caycedo-Kimura
It was loud, almost a crack,
like a shot—not a gunshot
but a shot-put shot dropped
on a stage. My mother’s forehead
hitting the bathroom floor.
Can I finish going to the bathroom?
Mom said as the EMTs
backed out into the bedroom.
Lunch Special
Modern Issues in Historical Fiction: An Interview with Vanessa Hua
interviewed by EJ Saunders
Vanessa Hua is an acclaimed writer based in San Francisco. Her fiction has generally encompassed the journeys of strong protagonists contending with big changes in their lives, often involving immigration and power. Her short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, renders stories of immigrant families who struggle to navigate their lives in America. Her debut novel, A River of Stars, raises issues of identity, immigration, and motherhood. Her latest novel, Forbidden City, portrays a young Chinese woman’s ambitions and hopes for her family and country during a revolutionary historical period. […]
Flash Prose
A Lasting Transformation
by DJ Hills
Our only child has transformed into a starfish. They called it a compulsion, then a desire. Limb by limb, eye by eye, they replaced the body we gave them. Is this worse than puberty? I can’t ask. Our child speaks starfish now: chemical excretions and spindly touch. I am as ignorant and useless as they swore in their youth I was.
I replay the memory of their birth; the way they twisted and turned until the doctors were forced to pull them from me, red and quiet as a given echinoderm. I’d wished for them, like any parent, the same pain. The same joy. […]
Interview
Finding a Sustaining Writing Community as a Young Parent with Author, Editor, Teacher, and Mentor, Tomas Moniz
Interviewed by Sierra-Nicole E. DeBinion
Tomas Moniz is the author of the debut novel, Big Familia, a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway, the LAMBDA, and the Foreward Indies Awards. He edited the Rad Dad and Rad Families anthologies. Moniz is a 2020 Artist Affiliate for Headlands Center for Arts and a 2022 UCross resident. He teaches creative writing at Berkeley City College and is a teacher/mentor at Antioch University Los Angeles. […]
