Tag: Issue 4

  • How to Write a Novel in 6 Steps

    1. Don’t write what you know. Start with what you don’t know, what you don’t understand. Pay attention to what compels you, what bothers and truly fascinates you. 2. Start to write about specific people. They live in a specific place at a specific time. You don’t think about those initial questions any more. You…

  • Dana Spiotta

    Dana Spiotta is the author of four novels: Innocents and Others, (2016), which won the St. Francis College Literary Prize and was shortlisted for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Stone Arabia (2011), which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist in fiction; Eat the Document (2006), which was a National Book Award Finalist in fiction and a recipient of the…

  • Negotiations

    CAST OF CHARACTERS DECLAN 33, musician OLIVIA, 33, designer SETTING Declan’s city apartment The stage represents a kitchen/dinning room of a city apartment. The kitchen is upstage left, a dining room to the right. ii. Scene 1 TIME: 8:00 am. At rise: OLIVIA, in an oversize shirt obviously DECLAN’s, is in the kitchen unloading the…

  • Grace Epstein

    Grace Epstein is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati where she teaches and serves as Assistant Head of the Department. She has published scholarly and creative work in a variety of journals including Genders and The Great Lakes Review. Four of her plays have been staged and produced.

  • Man’s Best Friend

    SYNOPSIS When Jane goes to visit her elderly parents, she discovers that her father has acquired a dog. An invisible dog. Her concern for his mental stability soon gives way to anger at her mother for allowing him this delusion. But the root of her father’s need for canine companionship is more complicated than simple…

  • Rod McFadden

    Rod McFadden began writing plays in 2009.    Since then, his plays have been well-received by audiences of theatres in San Francisco and throughout the country.   He has received awards in national playwriting competitions for his plays, Love Birds, Getting the Message, Counting on Love (which was also a Heideman award finalist).  His work was chosen for the…

  • Sandhill Cranes and Wine

                                                                                     Three Sandhill cranes landed, framed by the fading grey oak of the pasture fence. The…

  • Tom Conlan

    Tom Conlan lives, writes, and tends his grape vines in the highlands of Northern Michigan. He has captained a Coast Guard Cutter, sailed the world’s lakes and oceans, and now searches for the elusive brook trout in backwater streams where they love to hide. Tom’s work has appeared in print in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Issue…

  • The Drowned Room

    In the mariners’ church, those dredged from the sea laid out like fresh catch.   Identified by candlelight, dried foam at their mouth, the sea changed them.   Carried to the limits of water, the waves rescinded their promise, leaving them white as whalebone.   Lastly seeing the ultramarine world they occupied completely;   their…