Dieting

This is the story of how a sixteen-year-old me ended up in the hospital malnourished, almost taking my boyfriend along with me in a quest to look my best for Winter Formal. Before we start, it’s important to remember that I grew up very sheltered in a small suburban community Read more

Gustavo Barbur de Melo

Gustavo Barbur de Melo (he/him) is a Brazilian satirical writer with a successful track record of one failed marriage by the age of 25. Knowing little about smart financial decisions he got a highly practical master's degree in writing for screen and television at the University of Southern California. To deal with those and other failures he often writes humorous pieces which he workshops by testing whether his therapist will finally throw in the towel.

Amelia Bassano

A mistress at thirteen. Shocking for you – now. Not so for me – then. Juliet was only thirteen when she met, fell in love, and all too hastily, married Romeo. Perhaps that’s where life and art merge? The cloudy yet wholesome translucency of writing from experience. It isn’t a Read more

Emma Wells

Emma is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry and prose published with various literary journals and magazines. She is currently writing her fifth novel. Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 and her short story, ‘Virginia Creeper’, was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021. Recently, Emma won Dipity Literary Magazine’s 2024 Best of the Net Nominations for Fiction with a short story entitled ‘The Voice of a Wildling’. Her poem ‘Rose-Tainted is the winner of the poetry category, Discourse Literary Journal, February 2024 Issue.

Girl Fight

Last week, I sat alone at the bar in a family-friendly local pizza place. Only two miles away from where I live, this restaurant appeals to me for other reasons, like its theme. It is “galactic,’ with the inside of the building decorated with elaborate otherworldly creations. Paper mache planets Read more

Erin Murphy

Erin Murphy works as a waitress at a historical hotel in Asheville, North Carolina. Since she can remember, she has been shining her flashlight at the moon. The beautiful complexity of human connection is what interests Erin most. But she also enjoys dancing and playing darts.

BODY JUSTICE 1977

The university doctor examined me. Then all of his students examined me. “As you can see,” he explained, “the uterus is tipped, making bringing a fetus to term unlikely.” After I had dressed and sitting in his office we had a conversation. “The risk of miscarriage is high.” “I’ve already Read more

Katherine West

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective and Southwest Word Fiesta. New Verse News nominated her poem And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.

Two Minutes

9:48 a.m. So many yellow flowers down here at the river, hundreds of little suns. It is gorgeous and exactly as he described it. I won’t cross the river, though I can see the trail on the other side. I did bring my wading shoes just in case, but I Read more

Beate Sigriddaughter

Beate Sigriddaughter, www.sigriddaughter.net, lives in Silver City, New Mexico (Land of Enchantment), where she was poet laureate from 2017 to 2019. Her latest collections are short stories Dona Nobis Pacem (Unsolicited Press, December 2021) and poetry Wild Flowers (FutureCycle Press, February 2022). In her blog Writing In A Woman's Voice, she publishes other women's voices.,

The Visitor

I had been to see Mom every Monday and Thursday for the last two years, since the day she arrived. Not that she would have noticed. My visits had become a comforting routine, predictable and unchanging. Each Monday I would stop at William’s Cafe at precisely 9 am and use Read more

Cate Carlyle

Cate Carlyle is a librarian and the author of two young adult novels and a library reference book. Her short story “The Brothers” was shortlisted in the WFNS Nova Writes competition. Cate lives in Nova Scotia with her partner and supportive first-reader Bruce and their fur baby, Zoey.

Nothing Everything

It is New Year’s Eve so we dressed up to go out dancing, my best friend Mary and I, and headed out to some bar out in the country we’d never been to before, but we—M&M was how we were known (“we’re not plain, we’re nuts” we’d tell most everyone Read more

Myrna CG Mibus

Myrna CG Mibus is a writer and bookseller who lives in Northfield, Minnesota. She writes articles on topics ranging from aviation to afternoon tea and essays on family, motherhood, and life. Her essays and articles have been published in a variety of publications including Feminine Collective, Grown & Flown, Minneapolis StarTribune and Wanderlust Journal. When she’s not writing, Myrna enjoys baking, bicycling, gardening, reading and being mom to her two young adult children.

Witch Way Out

I befriended a witch who detests mankind. ‘Men are rarely kind,’ Joy says often, and when she does, I resist the urge to tell her that mankind is just another word for human beings. She loathes corrections, and I don’t want to feel her wrath again. ‘The human race is Read more

Ernestina Aggrey

Ernestina Aggrey is a Black British aspiring writer. She is a law graduate and is currently working on her first novel. She enjoys reading novels filled with characters who are fictional but feel real. She was mentored by Cesca Major after a mentor-mentee match on Black Girl Writers. Her flash fiction is forthcoming in Sweetycat Press and Brittle Paper.