Gabo Prize Winner
Two Poems
“Petition” written by Adnan Ghorayfi and “Khorramshahr and Free-for-All Coffins (Without Lids and Bodies)” written by Behzad Zarrinpour, both translated from Persian by Ali Asadollahi
Petition
For my homeland:
[ Mehr Alley, Number 20, Khorramshahr1 ]
I’m collecting signatures.
To save my beloved
[violated for thirty years in Iran
for ten years in London
and, since 1979, in San Francisco]
I’m collecting signatures.
Young Adult
Plaid Pocket Coat
by Reiko Mendez
“Plaid pockets. Frayed cuffs. Midnight blue,” the boy explained.
He peaked over the books from the aisle one over as I stocked the new books section. He’d said he ended up in my town because of a coat he had bought at a Salvation Army store. His brown eyes gazed into mine across the books. A flutter went through my chest. I’ve never had someone look at me as if… as if he was really seeing me.
Diana Woods Prize Winner
The Outhouse Keeps The Score
by Itto Outini
Content Warning: Bodily fluids
I’ve been asked on more than one occasion how I go to the bathroom as a blind person, and while I’ve given a variety of answers over the years, I usually respond like this: In the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, everyone goes to the bathroom blind.
Fiction
The Fig
by Orlantae Duncan
Mary Sadwell believed, like some daughters of difficult mothers, that her life didn’t truly begin until hers had died. No more lambasting her for indulging in second or third helpings; no more crooked pokes and prods into the iridescent question of her sex life; no more calls, cities away, demanding she call home more. The caged bird, as Mary sometimes thought herself under the gaze and measured judgements of her mother, was free to sing, loud and crystal clear.
Lunch Special
It’s Never One Thing: On Translation and Subversion; a Conversation with Dr. Sorcha de Brún
Interviewed by paparouna
Dr. Sorcha de Brún is an Associate Professor of modern Irish at the University of Limerick, a creative writer, and a literary translator. She has published on Irish language fiction, film woman looking away from the camera and smilingadaptation, and literary translation. Sorcha is an awardee of the John and Pat Hume Scholarship, the Máirtín Ó Cadhain Short Story Award, the Duais Foras na Gaeilge, numerous Oireachtas literary awards, as well as a national Teaching Hero Award. She is the Irish language Editor of Literary Encyclopedia. Her monograph on masculinities in Irish language fiction will be published by Arlen House in 2025, funded by the Royal Irish Academy.
Flash Prose
Are We There Yet
by Elizabeth Sundstrom
It was one of those old-fashioned public phone booths that were so common before mobiles. He was grateful to have spotted it because this way she wouldn’t recognize his number. He fed the slot several coins and shivered in the autumn air as he dialed.
He felt that familiar rush of adrenalin that came from anticipating her mood. She picked up on the second ring.
Interview
Transformation, Revelation, and Form: An Interview with Marguerite Sheffer
Interviewed by Mahru Elahi
“The uncanny prompts us to see even ourselves as unfamiliar—a stranger, someone we don’t recognize,” writes Marguerite (Maggie) Sheffer in an opinion piece for Education Week. The article is an unexpected spark, a literary craft talk, in an otherwise policy and practice-driven professional journal related to careers in public K-12 education.
