Novel Excerpts

Image

Dragonfly Out in the Sun

Tracey Dean Widelitz

Hold On To Me,
Sunlit Beauty,
and Rose Petals and Golden Wings

Refugees DRC

Despair Paintings

Owen Brown

The world seems to carry on as if there aren’t a million reasons to be shocked. But because I don’t want to go numb, I try to paint them, at least a few. For these, I paint figuratively, as I was trained, even though now, often, my desires, and my output, is abstract. Still, how can we ignore the drought in Afghanistan, the strife in Sudan, the war in Gaza, the invasion of Ukraine? Or even what goes on in our own lives?

Finding a Pathway

Finding a Pathway

Mark Rosalbo

As an emerging artist, the art form I work with is primarily abstract painting and large-scale installations. My artistic process involves using various mediums and techniques to create physical manifestations of internal dialogues and personal judgments. In my abstract paintings, I use house paint, various tools, and textured canvases. The technique involves creating overconfident brushstrokes that mask my imposter syndrome, with multiple layers of paint partially hidden under the surface. The inner turmoil arising from self-doubt is expressed as geometric shapes woven together with texture.

In Between

Wholeness Through Fracture: Sculpting the Human Condition

Aleksandra Scepanovic

Three works in clay by Aleksandra Scepanovic.
Each of these works tells a story of the complexity and beauty found in life’s fractures, embracing the wholeness that emerges through resilience.

Image

Coastal Grey

Miki Simic

This series of photographs, titled “Coastal Grey,” depicts elements of summer themes. My goal was to capture a vibrant setting and allow the viewer to realize it remains vibrant even though color is lacking.

Image

Symphony in Green

Patrice Sullivan

I paint landscapes, interiors, exteriors, still life’s with figures interacting and posing for the camera displaying memorable moments with families, friends, and neighbors.

friends

Friends, Triplets, and Family Narrative

Tianyagenv Yan

Tianyagenv uses light clay to make miniature figures and wishes to capture the characteristics of femininity, vulnerability, and resilience in potential.

Image

Green Canyon Bridge 1993, Thrive, and Tarot Deck: The Moon

Robb Kunz

My paintings explore the abstract simplicity of ordinary life and the deductive impulse to see ourselves reflected back in art.

Image

Metamorphosis

Marianne Dalton

The photographs are from the series, Metamorphosis. Each painterly creation constructed from dozens of layered photographs is driven by my reaction to nature’s extreme seasonal change.

La Huasteca

La Huasteca, Roots in Nuevo Leon, and Frames

Tee Pace

La Huasteca, Roots in Nuevo Leon, and Frames

Image

Cherry Blossoms

Annika Connor

Cherry Blossom Forest

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White

Janet Brugos

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White
Hurricane
Chicago Ice

Sunset over the Pacific

Three Photographs

Lawrence Bridges

UNDER THE PIER, MALIBU CA
SUNSET OVER THE PACIFIC
and POOL, POST RANCH INN, BIG SUR

Image

Joshua Tree Project

Holly Willis

The images are part of a larger series created in the Mojave Desert around Joshua Tree in the fall of 2023 that explore the shifting state of the desert.

October Still Life

Chasing Paradise

Marianne Dalton

This series, Chasing Paradise, draws upon my work as a fine artist in painting, as I create stylized photographs of flowers and plants found in my rural environment.

Turtle Light

Ocean Sleep and Turtle Light

Maite Russell

Turtle Light and Ocean Sleep are works of multimedia and sculpture mediums, respectively, depicting the natural world with fantastical elements.

Novel Excerpts

Featured image for “Her Eyes Reflected Oceans”
Kathleen Zamora

Her Eyes Reflected Oceans

At times it seems that just when life seems to be going your way, every little thing you could possibly imagine goes wrong. Everything you take for granted comes into view. The simple mornings, the perfect nights, the sleepy smiles, the warm dinners, the last hug you gave someone, the last words you said to another becomes permanent, fossilized in their memory, trapped in the coffin we call a body.

September 2023
Featured image for “The Twelve-Year Chaqwa: A Time of Suffering and Chaos”
Sandro F. Piedrahita

The Twelve-Year Chaqwa: A Time of Suffering and Chaos

When Rómulo and Julissa met at the Salsodromo, not knowing that was the moment when the past and the future were forever riven asunder, they both blatantly lied to each other, knowing there was nothing else to do. Each of them had an inadmissible secret. Rómulo could not tell Julissa he was a lieutenant in the Peruvian military. The Shining Path had “a thousand eyes and ears,” and if he disclosed he was a soldier, his life would be in mortal danger.

September 2023
Featured image for “Old Boyfriend”
Madeleine Belden

Old Boyfriend

Chase Richard Pitt–my first love–came back into my life at 3:57 p.m. on a Friday afternoon in October. Well, technically he walked into Paris Café, my modest thrift-store-decorated establishment, asking if he could get a bottle of water and a slice of quiche to go. I know the exact time because I close my café every day at four, and I was just heading toward the door.

September 2023
Featured image for “On the Rocks”
Ruth Hawley

On the Rocks

I decide to get out of the house while I can.
Before I can consciously articulate my heading, I’ve arrived at the beach by the lighthouse. Here, in the imprints of ebbing tides, is where I like to treasure hunt. Caws of herring gulls reverberate off grayscale skies as I begin my search.
It doesn’t take long for me to lose the sense of time passing. Minutes or hours later, I’m surprised to see another hand reach for the same piece of sea glass I’ve spotted, cobalt poking out between shards of tumbled rock. A jolt runs through me when our fingers touch.

August 2023
Featured image for “The Last Writer”
Julia Otto

The Last Writer

Eliot King, a senior high school athlete, is stuck picking up the pieces his sister left behind after her arrest and execution. In the year 2052, the New American Government (N.A.G) has forbidden practicing Dark Artists by penalty of rehabilitation, or in most cases, death. Two years after his sister’s death, Eliot discovers three illegal Artifacts, actual Writer’s notebooks, hidden in his sister’s old desk. “Nobody”, the mysterious Writer speaking through these pages, poses the question–who is the real author of this hidden work?

August 2023
Featured image for “Run to Finish”
Eric D. Johnson

Run to Finish

Frederick Douglass High School was a few blocks from Fairmount Park’s Strawberry Mansion, the estate that gave the area its quaint sounding name. The neighborhood had once been home to legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, artist Henry O. Tanner, and Three Stooges alum Larry Fine. There was a time when fans could view Athletics and Phillies baseball games from the rooftops of row houses that ran adjacent to Shibe Park or Connie Mack stadium.

July 2023
Featured image for “The Vanishing Point”
Zach Wyner

The Vanishing Point

Evan Reverie removes his Guiding Light™ earbud. It slips through his fingers and hits the cement floor with a crack. His stomach plummets. Despite having had it for a few years now, he still has a long way to go before it’s paid off.
He reaches down in the dark, his fingertips searching the cold cement until he feels the smooth, plastic-coated lithium bubble up from the floor. He caresses it, inspecting its surface, finds it intact and sighs in relief.

July 2023
Featured image for “Dancing with Lightning: Chapter 22”
Ran Diego Russell

Dancing with Lightning: Chapter 22

After Dave had ghosted Big Al’s throughout the five-day Seattle trip, Tino’s heavily garnished cover story of food poisoning from a frisée and radish salad with hazelnut dressing at his grandmother’s funeral was ignored, and he was promptly fired Monday morning.

June 2023
Featured image for “Aegolius Creek”
Micah L. Thorp

Aegolius Creek

Everything begins and ends in fire. That’s what Mrs. Green told me when I was eleven in her youth Bible study at the Aegolius Creek Community Church. God created the heavens and the earth from a great ball of flame. Which doesn’t seem much different than the Big Bang Theory, though Mrs. Green said it was blasphemous to suggest something other than God was responsible for creation.

June 2023
Featured image for “Blue Park Lane”
Jane McNulty

Blue Park Lane

Maybe everyone is just being nice because it’s my birthday, but I didn’t think it’d be possible for us to get to this point again.
“Goodnight. Don’t forget to unplug the lights,” my dad says, closing the gate of the fence.
“Okay, I just want to lie here for a minute,” I say, flopping back on the couch.

June 2023
Featured image for “Dancing with Lightning: Chapter 9”
Ran Diego Russell

Dancing with Lightning: Chapter 9

Mountains of cumulonimbus assembled in the high altitudes west of the city and scudded overhead as patiently as continental drift throughout the morning. The towering white masses augured heavy convection storms for Denver but ultimately held off losing their power till reaching the eastern plains. Once there, sixty miles off in the afternoon distance, the clouds were illuminated from within by constant electrical activity.

May 2023
Featured image for “Gigi”
Wesley Kapp

Gigi

I couldn’t sleep that night. I waited for the police to call or show up on our front porch, but they never did. I thought about calling Cecelia’s house, but I didn’t want them to connect me to her, which didn’t make any real sense because everyone knew we were best friends. I’d be one of the first people they’d come to. I watched the sunrise through my window and gave up trying to sleep.

April 2023
Featured image for “Blueprint”
Carol Jeffers

Blueprint

By the end of the third day, the house, so quiet, too quiet, understood it had been abandoned. Four more flies, proboscises quivering, investigated the garbage pail. Molly no longer controlled the kitchen, would not be wielding the swatter, and without a care in the world, the creatures flitted among the odiferous scraps. They would settle later, raise a family or two, and replace the human family now departed.

April 2023
Featured image for “Dancing With Lightning: Chapter 3”
Ran Diego Russell

Dancing With Lightning: Chapter 3

The year men first set foot on the moon, the Copersmith family had not depended on field work alone to fill their stomachs and gas tanks for two summers running. The San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys, the furrowed plains of eastern Oregon, Washington’s orchards telescoping their columned bounty in every direction—all that had provided work enough for the four, and later the five, of them to subsist on was abandoned overnight.

April 2023
Featured image for “The British Way of Dying”
Trevor Mitchell

The British Way of Dying

Friday afternoon. Although the wind was whipping viciously up Baldwin Street, the sky was an agreeable shade of blue, the colour of infinity, and as I walked home from work, I sensed the subtle change of mood in the city. For forty-eight hours everyone could forget about their crummy jobs and dull, shitty lives. The quotidian nightmare was about to go on hold.

March 2023
Featured image for “Dead Weight”
Linda Boroff

Dead Weight

Robinette Alcorn slept poorly at fourteen; her body did not seem designed for comfortable repose. When she lay on her side, her bony hips grew sore. The back of her head grew numb when she lay supine. Phantom itches sprang up on the backs of her thighs, the soles of her feet. She sweated or froze. Come morning, she left for school puffy and sullen, red creases in her face, her hair awry. Weekends, she slept until noon, waking ferocious and unrested.

March 2023
Featured image for “Autobiography of the Bomb: Teller in His Own Mind”
Jim Shankman

Autobiography of the Bomb: Teller in His Own Mind

The magazines and newspapers were saying all kinds of provocative, beguiling things about the man. He was Prometheus who stole fire from the gods for the benefit of mankind. He was Aladdin who let the genie out of the bottle. To the naysayers, he was the Dr. Jekyll whose potion transformed us all into Mr. Hyde. The guy had press like nobody has ever had press. He was a warrior saint, a holy knight of the realm.

March 2023
Featured image for “Dancing With Lightning: Chapter 1”
Ran Diego Russell

Dancing With Lightning: Chapter 1

Banged up but still breathing, the exhausted vagabond kept his eyes jammed shut. Whatever twisted coordinates his loose feet had landed him on this time, he wasn’t ready to face. The excuse for a mattress he lay on had corrugated his back muscles into a wreck of knots. The air in the room was musty and unseasonably warm. He could feel the claustrophobic lean of all four walls without looking. As usual, well shy of paradise.

February 2023
Featured image for “The Page of Fiction”
Alexander Verdoni

The Page of Fiction

At least working at the Middle Rapids Library ain’t so bad. It’s one of those fancy Carnegie libraries with brass chandeliers and porcelain tile work and stained-glass windows — all misplaced decadence for this rust-belt town. It’s pretty much a gothic castle complete with ghosts, labyrinthine hallways, black walnut paneled doors, dusty portraits of old, rich dead men no one wants to look at, and, most mysteriously of all, a turret housing the town’s large, defunct clock.

February 2023
Featured image for “Death & Love”
Scott Lambridis

Death & Love

I was ten. My mother was in bed, rags over her head, buried among blankets. She’d been sweating for days, could barely turn her head without vomiting. I cleaned the ceramic dish we used as a bedpan. It wasn’t just her; everyone was sick.
Ten years ago, we’d relocated. I was just an infant. Neighboring warlords were having a dispute, and the Legion was called in to make peace.

January 2023
Featured image for “Autobiography of the Bomb: Chapter Nineteen”
Jim Shankman

Autobiography of the Bomb: Chapter Nineteen

July 16. Five o’clock in the morning. Teller is a groggy, irritable man. They are twenty miles away from the tower where the gadget has finally been hoisted into place with the plutonium core nestled inside the wired aluminum sphere. There is no hint of sun yet in the sky. He wants to get this over with.

January 2023
Featured image for “Accept All Changes”
Caroline Cooper

Accept All Changes

A few of Natasha Boginya’s friends started a regular tradition of dining on Monday nights at a fine restaurant in Greenwich Village. Here was a New York besotted with heavy linens, Italian marble, the generous pour. Truffled potatoes. Sautéed spinach. Roasted meats. A larder full of bottles. The light fixtures hung low, bemused.
The place was an old stalwart of Tzarist times that smiled from behind a display of unwavering conquest and success.

January 2023
Featured image for “Praise Orb”
Gloria Nixon-John

Praise Orb

We watched things change everywhere else in the world, but we never expected the whirlwind of change that showed up one day on our doorstep. (In our case, me, Mom, and Dad). The change came in the form of a little Rumpelstiltskin of a man carrying a black valise and a clipboard. (Odd, I thought, that he didn’t have a computer or smart phone.) He said he was from the Census Guard of The New Order, and that I was obliged to answer honestly. I didn’t dare ask who was doing the obliging, mostly because of the elephant-gray vehicle moving slowly down the street.

December 2022
Featured image for “A Cypress Tree Has No Shadow: Chapters Three and Four”
Kevin Gerard Neill

A Cypress Tree Has No Shadow: Chapters Three and Four

SYBILLA steered Justina by the arm out of the office and down a hallway of high, dulled walls that looked shadowy even in daytime despite the frail radiance of bulbs in widely spaced, brass chandeliers. There were few people around; mostly Palestinian staff with UN identity badges around their necks going from office to office. Others – Justina took them to be refugees – appeared to be drifting aimlessly.

December 2022