When I was a kid, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas stretched, becoming magical and seemingly endless. Each day my brother and I opened a paper window on our Advent calendar to reveal a tiny square of the hidden picture….
Guest Post: Why Some People are Still Afraid of the ‘L’ Word by Lyndsey Ellis
I remember the first time I had the guts to tell someone I wanted to be a writer. I was a sophomore in college. At the time, my horrible grades in math weren’t enough to help me transition into one…
Guest Post: Nipple Slips and Murder: a List of Illegal Things by Julianne Berokoff
I was sitting in an office with my poetry teacher during my last semester at school. Her window faced the arching freeway onramp of the 57 North, shooting white glints from cars onto the finger paintings and crayon sketches pinned…
Guest Post: A Late Bloomer’s Guide to Publishing by Chelsey Drysdale
Until I walked into a UCLA Extension personal essay class in January 2013 when I was 39-years-old, I was an unpublished perfectionist with a fear of failure so debilitating I hadn’t written a word in two years. I was a…
Guest Post: The Accidental Poets by William Greenfield
Some decades ago I unwittingly fathered a baby girl. Through some trick of fate or the magic of genetics, that baby girl helped me develop into something loosely resembling a poet. I say “loosely” because part of me believes that…
A Conversation with Tasha Cotter
An interview by Alicia Cole. Tasha Cotter is the author of the poetry collection Some Churches (Gold Wake Press, 2013) and the chapbooks That Bird Your Heart and Girl in the Cave. Winner of the 2015 Delphi Poetry Series, her…
Guest Post: The Art of Construction by Shaina Clingempeel
Oftentimes, people picture the modern poet as an outspoken individual. This individual shares even her early scraps. I, however, differ from this image. Throughout college, I dreaded the workshop circle. While I like the concept of collaboration, I struggle to…
Guest Post: Laryngitis by Diana Conces
Laryngitis is, of course, a temporary loss of voice. You try to speak, and what comes out is this awkward, hollow hiss, like a particularly disgruntled ghost dragging a rusty pitchfork across a chalkboard, and then everyone around you puts…
Secretary by Megan Roberts
I was called a secretary again. When I hear the word, it makes my blood boil. I know my master’s degree is sitting on the shelf laughing at the way my face contorts when my co-workers spew their venom. The…
A Conversation with Vanessa Blakeslee
An interview by Alicia Cole. Vanessa Blakeslee is the author of the debut novel, Juventud (Curbside Splendor, 2015), hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as a “tale of self-discovery and intense first love.” Her story collection, Train Shots (Burrow Press) won the…
Guest Post: A-merica, our home and native land… by Garreth Chan
I spent two months of my summer entangled and confused in an endless jungle of a fantastically exotic city. Glass and cement twisted into a permanent tango, childish handwriting in chalk emblazoned across uneven sidewalks, slowly scrubbed away by the…
The Fierce and Fragile Journey of Sidestepping Landmines by Catherine Adel West
With every word I write, I try to sidestep a landmine. Avoid disaster. Writing my first novel, I was hoping to find some blueprint on how to vividly dissect and then construct the complex and celebrated distinctions of black women….