MISS TANG was a plump woman in her thirties and our seventh-grade homeroom teacher. She had a kind, matronly smile but sprung into tantrums over trifles. Her punishment of choice was meditation. After school, we’d sit at our desks with straight backs, knee-bound palms, and closed-tight eyes while Miss Tang surveilled us . . .
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I have touched those cold seedswaiting to sprout, to reach toward whatis sun. North & South did taste different. But I don’t trust my memory. —from Elizabeth Bradfield’s “#73” (Volume 66 Issue 3) What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?Everything I read influences me, but some of my . . .
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HE IS A MAN of stories, and of music. He would scoff to hear me say he has an artistic bent; his verdict on himself is that he lacks imagination. In other matters, too, he has the habit of self-effacement. And yet he’s bold, on the verge of overbearing, when marshaling evidence. He . . .
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Photo credit: Rebekkah Drake “Help!” I yell, because I am clearly not qualified to deal with an unresponsive Tony Robbins. I am qualified to bring in hummus and in a couple, maybe three, years to teach high school social studies or history or whatever, if I can get back and finish my . . .
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***My goldfinch, I’ll throw back my head—let’s look at the world together:A winter’s day, prickly as chaff,isn’t it hard on your eyes? —from The Voronezh Notebooks by Osip Mandelstam, translated by Margaree Little, Volume 66 issue 3 (Fall 2025) Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.One of the first . . .
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OUR BARRIO SITS on the borders between Bukidnon province and Cagayan de Oro city, a half-forgotten hinterland. Cross the last sitio’s bridge, and you’ve left the city behind. Bukidnon’s roads are the end of asphalt dreams, where concrete gives way to earth: a bumpy quagmire in the season of rains, a dusty . . .
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some dusks I linger long enoughto watch bats stream from the eaves of my neighbor’s houselike blood starved ofoxygen I could cut my ownumbilical cord to the world to watch theindigo sky leak out and believe I was thesource. I’m sorry. I’m sorry —from Brian Russell’s “Missouri,” Vol 66, issue 3 (Fall . . .
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My Dear D, after twelve years of trying, I no longer hope you’ll remember we were once two peanuts nestled in the same shell.—from “What Peanuts Remember,” Vol 66 Issue 3 (Fall 2025) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.My first creative writing piece was this fiction about a . . .
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and know: the clouds don’t know about the rain,and the water doesn’t know about the leavesfrom which it beats the music, rhythms, language —from Arno Bohlmeijer’s translation of “Become,” by Esther Jansma, Vol 66 Issue 3 (Fall 2025) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.“The Intruder,” Encounter Magazine, UK . . .
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Gimena recognized two things. One: her neighbors meant no real harm, that they were merely bored, and an element of drama, no matter how false, was too juicy to deny; and two: she would turn into an ugly, bitter, unrecognizable version of herself if she stayed amongst them. —from J. Nevada’s “What . . .
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