ISSUE 23.1 • SPRING/ SUMMER 2024

About our cover image: “Presidents Room” by Wong WanYee, Ann Wong (b.1996)  obtained a BA in Visual Arts from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2020,  and she currently lives and works in Hong Kong and Sweden. Wong uses different media to record and reflect on trifles in life. In her works, she explores the possibilities among media by duplicating,  extracting, covering or simplifying individual elements and then combining them in a specific way.

From the artist: Living in the same city, we brush past familiar strangers every day, without conversation, without eye contact. Yet, we share the same space, aware of each other’s existence, day after day, continuing each other’s urban life experiences.

When an individual or a group tries to disrupt the systematically managed space by not adhering to its norms, appearing or using the space in an “inappropriate” way, it may create a gap in our monotonous lives, prompting us to rethink the relationship between urban space, strangers in the city, and the mutual influence. Through the medium of painting, I depicted the tug-of-war between the repetitive personal actions in daily life and the urban space.

Fiction

Sylvia Fox
Dispatches

Areej Quraishi
The Night She Returns

O. Edwin Ozoma
Family Tree

Andrea Rinard
Hurricane Season

Hannah Rovska-Strider
Last Night at the Gentlemen’s Club

Creative Nonfiction

AUTOHARP
 
Response to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self’s Op-Ed about Columbine Published in the Local Paper in 1999
 
Brianna Pike
Self-Portrait of a Woman Losing Her Name
 
Eric Roy
The Last Time I Didn’t See You
 

Hibah Shabkhez
Memeless

Sandra Simonds
On Attention

Artwork

Juanjuan Henderson 
Who Will Save Us

Ann Wong
Picnic with the Conjoined 

Mocong Yuan
Chairs

Juanjuan Henderson
Chase

Poetry

Emma Aylor
Workbook Exercises

Erin Bennett 
Northern Tongue

Rhienna Guedry
MANTLEPIECE

Caylie Herrmann
Aubade with 1992 Corolla

Caylie Herrmann
Polycephaly

Romana Iorga
Waiting for Engraftment

Paris Jessie
maybe, i’m tangled in

Christen Noel Kauffman
Medusa Finds Me, Climbs Inside

Mercedes Lawry
Retreat

Donald Pasmore
My Mouth of Letters Spells Nothing

Anthony Thomas Lombardi
Leviathan swallows Behemoth & several singing canaries

Joseph Radke
Later That Evening 

Lauren Yarnall 
What Turns Me On

Awards

Milton J. Kessler Memorial Prize for Poetry

John Schneider
And After Epiphany

Harpur Palate Creative Nonfiction Award 

Pritha RaySircar
Native Instruments

John Gardner Memorial Prize for Fiction

Avery Holmes
Mr. Buttercakes

Issue Masthead

Editor in Chief Alycia Calvert
Managing Editor Shannon Hearn
Fiction Co-Editor Sam Corradetti
Fiction Co-Editor Jesse Gilleland
Poetry Co-Editor Jordan Franklin
Poetry Co-Editor Ella Flores
Creative Nonfiction Editor Suzanne Richardson

… and this issue would not exist without the continued guidance and support from our former EIC, Dr. Hannah Carr-Murphy. We miss you desperately, and cherish your creative legacy with every word!