English
0 min 70 min
Ain’t No Word But Lonely USA
The first time Anna heard her son’s heartbeat, it was through the doctor’s stethoscope; a hummingbird beat, a frantic thumping; a small frenetic voice.  She was a linguist, the first of her circle of friends to...
Ain’t No Word But Lonely
Rachel A. Levine
9 min
Tertullian’s Law USA
Maggie is an expectant mother in a state that grants personhood at conception and protects the child’s rights over those of their mother.   The world changed when I wasn’t looking. That’s what it felt like,...
Tertullian’s Law
Tia Levings
10 min
The Mother of all Defiance – Fourth Place USA
Mom gave me a block of cheddar cheese and a sleeve of Fig Newtons when I left home for California in August of 1983. Apparently back then, when crossing the country alone in an unreliable foreign...
The Mother of all Defiance – Fourth Place
Mimi Broihier
9 min
Close to the Body – Fifth Place Israel
I remember a tree. Its crown awning the path. I remember a large trunk, thicker than any I had seen before. I remember roots cleaving the black earth, bursting it asunder, like snakes fighting free and...
Close to the Body – Fifth Place
Sarit Elkon
9 min
The UFO, The Beach, and The Dead Mexico
In the early nineties, The Beach of The Dead was little more than a greyish strip at one end of Boca del Rio, Veracruz’ twin city. Its burning sands were covered in spiny scrubs festooned with...
The UFO, The Beach, and The Dead
Fernanda Melchor
8 min
The Father Hole Sweden
When Dad’s eyelids drop like a guillotine she pulls the car door shut with a click. He turns his gaze to the road, and from her shady spot in the backseat she can only see his...
The Father Hole
Andrea Lundgren
32 min
Lydia Germany
We used to jump, Lydia and I, as high and as often as we could, hands high over our heads, wearing colourful dresses, our knees pulled up, our feet in stout shoes we were allowed to...
Lydia
Zsuzsa Bánk
10 min
Scenario (A Chapter from a Novel) Palestine
We didn’t stay long at the bar. After we got Melanie’s text, I had the feeling that each of us wanted the other to finish their drink so we could take off for one of our...
Scenario (A Chapter from a Novel)
Unknown Author
7 min
Rock-n-Roll Flower Mexico
Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal. Monstrous the first vertebrate that succeeded in standing on two feet and thus spread terror among the beasts still normally and happily crawling close to the ground...
Rock-n-Roll Flower
Luis Carlos Fuentes Ávila
20 min
A Woman in a Space Israel
A woman is workspace when will someone love you? Have you ever stayed seated in your chair until lunchtime, you drink lots of water- your body took the shape of a chair. A woman in workspace,...
A Woman in a Space
Tehila Hakimi
3 min
Black Foam Eritrea
A Chapter from the novel, Black Foam   (7)   He placed the suitcase lightly into the tray, and then took off to meet it on the other side. However, the soldier across from him waved...
Black Foam
Haji Jaber
6 min
Some People Run in Shorts Faroe Islands
A runner asked me one morning on my way to work, “Hey, you. Can you tell me what time it is?” I replied, “Ten to.” “To what?” he asked. I stared at him briefly. “To eight,”...
Some People Run in Shorts
Sólrún Michelsen
7 min
Safe Zone Israel
I wash my hands, scrubbing them. They still smell of shit. 1. Sophie went joyfully down the slide, straight into Danny’s waiting arms. When he offered to help her climb back up, she said, “By myself.”...
Safe Zone
Deakla Keydar
9 min
And The Sea Is Not Full Israel
 “I have not yet begun to fight!” John Paul Jones    1   The road descends all the way to the sea, as though the whole world was a huge basin where everything drove, sailed, glided...
And The Sea Is Not Full
Edna Shemesh
11 min
The Castle in the Woods USA
Nature is a haunted house — but Art — is a house that tries to be haunted. -Letter excerpt, Emily Dickinson, 1876.   Chilled Autumn air settled over me, the dryness of it tickling my lungs....
The Castle in the Woods
Isabella Connor
9 min
Leaving the Meadows USA
Two people came through the double glass doors of a twelve-story brick building and walked along the chain link fence to the parking lot. The tall, gray-haired man guided the short, white-haired woman by her elbow,...
Leaving the Meadows
Megan Staffel
18 min
Scandal Palestine
Although I was only ten years old, I could understand that something important had happened. Every time our bedroom door opened, my mother shut it again so we wouldn’t hear the frantic whispering in the living...
Scandal
Alaa Hlehel
4 min
Lucerne Tunnel Palestine
When Suzanne came back from Switzerland, she’d left three-quarters of her body weight behind.  That wasn’t her only loss, however, or the most significant. And I don’t think she’d object if I told you that losing...
Lucerne Tunnel
Khalil Nasif
3 min
Glory UK
When Glory’s parents christened her Glorybetogod Ngozi Akunyili, they did not foresee Facebook’s “real name” policy, nor the weeks she would spend populating forms and submitting copies of her bills and driver’s license and the certificate...
Glory
Lesley Nneka Arimah
20 min
By His Things Shall You Know Him Canada
I thought that Mr. Purnell was a little young to be a funeral director, but he had the look down cold. In the instant between his warm, dry handshake and my taking my hand back to...
By His Things Shall You Know Him
Cory Doctorow
20 min
He Saw Too Iraq
Today’s Friday. I might be mistaken though, and it could be Saturday.   How stupid! Why couldn’t it be Sunday or Monday? It’s not worth thinking about or even looking at the calendar. I can’t even...
He Saw Too
Irada Al-Jubori
5 min
The Real Mother’s Song USA
 “Win, win, win, win, win, win, win!!” was the incessant cry of our stepmother Sophie. It was the command that drove our household. She was a slight woman with a turned-up nose and a perky hairdo...
The Real Mother’s Song
Geoff Schmidt
9 min
The Dependant’s Tale as told to Marina Lewycka Ukraine
The nighTMaRe always sTaRTs in the same way: a big man standing at the foot of my bed, shouting at me. ‘Get up! Hurry hurry hurry! Pack up your stuff! We’ve come to take you away.’...
The Dependant’s Tale as told to Marina Lewycka
Marina Lewycka
9 min
The Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith Scotland
The first thing that happens, you tell me, is that school stops. We are meeting in a room in a London university so that you can tell me, in anodyne safe surroundings, a bit about your...
The Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith
Ali Smith
19 min
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