Contents
- Featured Writers
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Allen Wier
Gideon Jones, an excerpt from Wier's long-awarted novel, TEHANO
88
'This youngest one, fifteen or sixteen, moved from the shadows into a spill of sunlight where she stopped sudden and watched the two men as a wild deer might, nose up, muscles tight. Unless light and shadow played tricks on Gideon, her nostrils twitched, as she read his scent. Then she did a sort of dance…'
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Charlotte Warren
Home Base,
6
'Lance Secours had made the porch swing his home. He rocked lazily, a cigarette in one hand, a smile in the other, as he looked us over, the new arrivals…'
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Peter Selgin
Black Words on Yellow Paper,
20
'I'm writing this with a black Sharpie on yellow paper. To me, yellow is the color of lies. I once knew a boy named Victor…. Damned if he wasn't the biggest liar…'
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Steve Taylor
Suspension Day,
30
'She took my fingers away and ran her tongue over the tips, pulled my head down and brushed the bald spot wither her lips…. Now every time I reach up and touch the spot, that's what comes to mind….'
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Robert Vivian
Woman On A Porch,
42
'Big Mama's pregnant again, but she doesn't know who the father is, Tommy, Elroy, or Floyd…. The house belongs to her ex-boyfriend's father, but it's the porch where she really lives, her body reaching out toward the horizon in a cosmic embrace…'
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Michael Phillipps
The Burden of Molecules,
48
'As he strolls into our lives, though his gaze remains fixed on the horizon, it can be asserted with confidence that he never ever, not once, steps on a crack. I speak of that tidy apparition, that minutely precise dandy, that specter, that spirit, and ghoul of senseless ritual, the Scrupulous Man….'
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Noel Kalenian
Birdman,
58
'These city trees grow some strange fruit, I tell ya, life wrecks sleeping by their shopping carts around the planters. Red noses, or what you can see of their ruddy faces from beneath green army blankets. I talk to these people. I spy their ruddy faces leerin' in the hillside brush, along the secret trails behind the houses…'
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Sarah Flygare
Learning to Stand,
69
'I don't know how to explain to him where dreams go when you awaken. I don't know how to explain that some things exist only in your head but that sometimes those things carry more weight than the things that exist outside your head….'
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An Interview with Julia Glass
A Pallette of Words, by Sherry Ellis,
78
'Julia Glass, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction, never studied writing and didn't get feedback on THREE JUNES until it was completed. Instead she invited the characters in THREE JUNES to set up a home inside of her head…'
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Contents
- Special Section
New Millennium Awards 18 & 19
1st Place, Nonfiction, NMW 19
Joshua Leavitt,
New Kid's Revenge,
102
'Do you think I like being called a geek and a retard? Do you think I like everyone laughing at me behind my back and saying, 'There goes Paul, the freak….'
1st Place, Fiction, NMW 18
Jacob M. Appel,
Enoch Arden's One Night Stands,
123
'When it came time for the delicate, dark-eyed girl named Joanna to unburden herself, he thought of her reflection and how he had looked away too suddenly, and now he positively trembled….'
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1st Place, Fiction, NMW 19
Noëlle Wall,
Secrets,
113
'No one else knows he is there. He huddles behind the chair for a minute, ten minutes, an hour, watching. Back in his bed he is too excited to sleep. He is changed. He feels the change at the molecular level… He has peered into another universe, one he never imagined existed. Possibilities swirl around him; he is dizzy with their implications….'
1st Place, Nonfiction, NMW 18 (tie)
Robert von Stein Redick,
Uncrossed River,
138
'This is a work of nonfiction, about an actor and fiction writer and a woman lost among dreams. A true story, that is, of three adherents to pretty non-truths. As the fiction writer… I am most anxious to be believed….'
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1st Place, Nonfiction, NMW 18 (tie)
Meeka McCallum,
The Line,
152
'In my dream, I am shackled. My hands and feet are bound and there is something piercing my tongue—a long metal needle that cuts the roof of my mouth when I close it. I have to keep my mouth open as wide as I can, and the pain is unbearable, but I am not alone. Someone else is here, an older sister, but she is also me. I want her help….'
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1st Place, Poetry, NMW 19
Justin Vicari,
The Competition,
160
'This time the strange men's hands on him brought medicine, and life, like the irrigation
of a desert. Now there's a river
winding down my father's leg, a valley of pink roses
up and down his chest, crossroads joining on his shoulders and arms….'
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1st Place, Poetry, NMW 18
Renée Ruderman,
Leaving Fürth bei Nüremberg,
162
'You can't see
my mother's face in the sketch,
but the angle of her shoulder
weighted by a backpack
and her hand reaching
for the suitcase handle mean
she's leaving….'
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Cover Painting
by Cynthia Markert
Cover Design
by Rhonda Swicegood
of Hart Graphics
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