Featured Writing

Close-up of waves

At the Coastal Commission Hearing On The Desalinization Plant

by Kimberly Nunes The question was water, how to bring more to our lives.It may all come down to the Western Snowy Plover.City seats and valley farms, ecologists, and native tribes—the thing is water, how to bring it to our lives.Ohlone Esselen Monterey coast, here, where this bird thrives,the size…

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Posts Tagged nonfiction

The Broken Road

by Ruben Rucoba In 2004, at the age of 40, I underwent a stem cell transplant for something called myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood disorder that turns cancerous. The transplant saved my life, for which I am truly grateful. But the transplant also taught me something that many patients with life-threatening…

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Blindside

by Linda Bragg   LATE DECEMBER 1972 The sour smell of lung cancer clings to the humid air – heavy, unyielding. My family lives in Florida, and like most homes, ours has no air-conditioning. My father’s been sick for two years — now he’s coughing up blood and breathing has…

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Butchery

by Marilee Robin Burton I trekked to Glendale to retrieve a copy of Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips, an intense and dark writer. The book was a collection of stories I’d been wanting to read and had even ordered from Amazon but was too anxious to await the money-saving secondhand…

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A Weed in the Garden

by Cathy Krizik Keandra placed her napkin in her lap. “Can we pray?” Oh shit. Lunch was supposed to be soup and salad. Not this. I clenched my teeth and dropped my knife, the clang reverberating like a spade hitting rock. Here? Now? Really? “Pray—right. Yes, of course.” Keandra and…

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The Upside Down Chair

by Michelle Huston I have no memory of the first time I got my period. I can barely remember getting it this past week, although the gnawing feeling inside my uterus reminds me that it did indeed arrive on Wednesday. I do, however, remember when I first learned that a…

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The House

by Tracey Loscar The air remains heavy and hot, despite the fact that the sun has long since disappeared. Summer nights in the south aren’t so much a cooling off as a kicking off of the heavier blanket, where the sheet gets left on, keeping some of the air trapped….

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First Infusion

By Naomi Ruth Lowinsky “I’m a green-and-yellow basket case,” you tell me, shuffling from bathroom to bedroom and back. We lean on each other, laughing. The basket weaver of the stars sent you to me, my green man, my pollen, my salmon leaping upriver. A tisket, a tasket, we’re in…

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Thanksgiving

By Diane Walters I’m a slob! Right now the dishes are piled up in every square inch of my ten-foot kitchen. They are on the stove, in the stove, on the counter, in both sinks and in the dish drain rack; they are stacked two and a half-feet high on…

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Advice to Writers

By Paulette Zander The 57 books I’ve read about the art and craft of writing boil down to three rules. Rule #1: Never pay someone to read your writing. Rule #2: Listen to your muse. Rule #3: Do not let friends and family read your work. I have broken all…

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No Named Boy

By Julie Young Kara skipped into our cluttered kitchen with a huge lace bow tied in front of her silky red dress. Her smile created dimples on each side of her porcelain cheeks; her caramel eyes sparkled with pride as her little fingers untied the bow and then dipped lace…

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