The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during July 2023. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in July 2023!
Congratulations to the following WWS members, whose short stories appeared in in Made in L.A. Vol 5: Vantage Points, edited by Sara Chisolm, Gabi Lorino, Allison Rose, and Cody Sisco and published by Resonant Earth Publishing:
- “Window Walking” by Ryane Nicole Granados: Two young girls on a sidewalk stroll seek tantalizing glimpses of domestic scenes.
- “A False Start” by Catie Jarvis: A woman makes a decision about parenthood and faces surprising consequences.
- “All That Can Wait” by Noriko Nakada: A daycare situation is upended by the impacts of immigration policy.
- “Epic Stick” by Thea Pueschel: A character’s journey into nostalgia on a skateboard ends in misery.
- “Looking for Joey” by Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera: A woman searches for a missing brother after he’s kicked out of the house for coming out as gay.
- “Half-Buried Hearts” by Hazel Kight Witham: A teenager’s friendship crosses racial divides even as her father remains stuck in his prejudices.
Congrats also to Désirée Zamorano, whose short story “Magda’s Hen” appeared in Alta.
It is a question faced by all backyard farmers who house hens for their sporadic and speckled fresh eggs: What to do with the bird once the laying’s done?
Magda had been mentally weighing this question over Goldy, her Buff Orpington hen, for a few weeks now. Goldy, like her name, was a gorgeous glossy yellow. She pecked in the backyard with the two other hens. The girls, as Magda called them, made her laugh as they squabbled with one another over the feed she set out for them, then made up. Goldy had laid an egg nearly every other day for 10 years, which was an astonishing rate. A few months ago, she stopped completely.
Kudos to Ashunda Norris, whose poem “Please Adjust Tracking for Best Picture” appeared in Torch Literary Arts.
I was three days sober
so I don’t remember the color of grandma’s casket
but I can see my sister comin from ‘round a corner
of the white church like it lived in her
green carpet porch steps curved to her body’s bones
my Mama’s face an o as prodigal daughter walks
up to the truck like we just saw her yesterday ‘stead of
two years ago under big city lights
all of us mute except Mama is that..?? oh my baby
git in hea – Shunda move so ya susta can climb in nie
we sit in the hungry silence.
A shout out to Marya Summers, whose poem “A Hard Climb” appeared in Kaleidoscope.
Tehachapi, I am told, means
a hard climb
in the language of the Nuwa,
the indigenous people of this
hardscrabble land.
The rugged terrain
mounts on desert feet, and
at dawn, the sun creeps
over the eastern peak, wild
with scrub oak and piñon pine.
Congrats to Valerie Anne Burns, whose personal essay “Sexting at Sixty” appeared in Deep Overstock.
My cream-colored shrug so easily slipped off my shoulders and ran down my arms to the floor. This is not what I had envisioned as necessary to break the ice and the process of melting away fear and self-consciousness. He saw and felt no fear, only assured of his movements, which were seductive, and I wondered where my scars were because he did not see them. He didn’t even see them under the blush colored and thin double strapped lace bra. My cheeks blushed to match the bra that fell to the floor near the shrug. My eyes glanced down at the fallen attire along with my fallen modesty.