Zdravka Evtimova Photo: jenny downing We are all strong and difficult people in our family. My father drank, it was true, but he made the best cornel brandy in Southern Bulgaria, and Bulgarians, Jews, and Greeks alike gave their last pennies to buy Dad’s home brew for their sons’ weddings. My elder brother was the […]
Category "Prose"
Carts
July 5, 2011 by · No comments
Artist of the Week – Frank Burton
February 5, 2011 by · 1 comment
Interview by Yana Radilova with the writer Frank Burton Frank Burton: “I’d like to think there’s no limit to anyone’s imagination.” Do you remember your first steps in writing? The first proper writing I did was at the age of about eight or nine. I started writing humorous poems, which were pretty good for a […]
I Am Home
January 22, 2011 by · No comments
Zdravka Evtimova Photo: 8363028@N08 Keith knew Hilda would understand. She always did. She was the perfect wife. He sat by the window and she knew she didn’t have to make the slightest noise. If he sat by the fireplace she knew she had to bring him coffee, he liked his coffee black and she remembered […]
The Lighting Technicians
January 17, 2011 by · No comments
Kristin Dimitrova Photo: calliope Theodor Bogdanov was powdering his face. “Sometimes I think he is following me. No, I’m sure he follows me. Hiding in the doorway of the house across the street, waiting for me to come out. Then, as I’m trying to figure out whether the drizzle is worth an umbrella, and I’m […]
The Confessions of a Sex Doll
November 9, 2010 by · 1 comment
Kristin Dimitrova Photo: arcticpuppy It was love at first sight. Stooping, he entered the shop and threw a quick glance around, just in case. His coat collar was turned up and his hat was pulled over his eyes. As it closed, the door hit the little bell above and he flinched. For a moment I […]
Talk to Me
October 29, 2010 by · No comments
Kristin Dimitrova Снимка: binaryape The small park was huddled behind an administrative building with forbidding windows and several blocks of flats built in different times. Squeezed among them, a yellow house still defended its privacy behind a high brick wall. It looked like an aged David puzzled which Goliath to strike first. Unremoved Christmas decorations, […]
The Men She Didn’t Know
October 21, 2010 by · No comments
Zdravka Evtimova Photo: notsogoodphotography Bertha had tried this joke so many times that she had got tired of it. She’d enter one of these large clean cafes on Louisa Boulevard, under the big chestnut trees that looked like old gossipy wives and she’d see a guy sitting at one of the neat tables. She’d choose […]
Granite
August 3, 2010 by · No comments
Zdravka Evtimova Photo: megyarsh Shon didn’t have enough money. All his friends had forgotten him. He couldn’t pay his sex tax and that meant that he could no longer be a man. He’d be processed into a stone, and he knew he’d be deaf and blind dust. Each particle of the dust he would turn […]
Night Flight
July 24, 2010 by · No comments
Shae Davidson Photo: Joi “There was a river in Ohio that caught fire,” Gordon said as he poured sugar into his coffee. “Near Cleveland, I think. So many chemicals dumped in year after year—one day it just went.” Gordon was a reliable source for obscure information whether useful, disturbing, or just puzzling. His family had […]
An extract from the novel “Bigdeal Tina”
July 23, 2010 by · No comments
Julia Spirirdonova Photo:pinksherbet Life sucks. If someone tries to tell you otherwise, don’t buy it. One has to be a complete idiot to be an optimist. I feel like dying when they tell me “Your life is yet to begin.” Couldn’t they come up with something better? Hellooo, not my life is yet to begin; […]
Here We Go
July 21, 2010 by · No comments
Erin Chandler Photo: CarbonNYC Samantha told me my heart had been broken three times. Samantha’s the psychic medium I talked to the other day. I know everybody thinks ‘yeah, yeah’ but she was good and she was right. My heart has been broken three times. All three times felt pretty much the same… lost, lonely, […]
Night flight
July 15, 2010 by · No comments
Shae Davidson Photo: nicholas_t/ “There was a river in Ohio that caught fire,” Gordon said as he poured sugar into his coffee. “Near Cleveland, I think. So many chemicals dumped in year after year—one day it just went.” Gordon was a reliable source for obscure information whether useful, disturbing, or just puzzling. His family had […]
Hollywood
July 6, 2010 by · No comments
Erin Chandler Photo: Hamed Saber “I’ve been where you’re hanging, I think I can see how you’re penned; when you are not feeling holy your loneliness says that you’ve sinned…” Leonard Cohen It was Anton I was most worried about. Not how I was going to get back to North Carolina, where I was going […]
Zanzibar
July 2, 2010 by · 1 comment
Rose McCann Photo: Lidia Tagnesi -1- It’s early Saturday morning, the Halloween party ended hours ago, and before his overnight guests begin to stir from their drug- and alcohol-induced sleep, William de Vere discovers a letter that the landlady has slid under his door in the middle of the night. With growing alarm he reads […]
War and Peace
June 30, 2010 by · No comments
By Petar Marchev Translation from Bulgarian:Asya Draganova Photo:dspender Petar Marchev’s “War and Peace” won second place in Public-Republic’s competition for prose. Kolyo is a road man. Kolyo is short – sighted. Kolyo loves kalvados*. Kolyo goes hunting wild pigs. But kills a man. The guy had a 6-year old son. When Kolyo walks past the […]
Journal 7/5th
May 29, 2010 by · 4 comments
Jason F. McDaniel Photo: tourist_on_earth I want to be dead. I am not thinking about divorce or mothers crying to God as their sons are taken away or the two guys in my company who were killed driving down a thousand year old street. I am thinking about my life and all the life that […]
Undergrowth
April 25, 2010 by · No comments
Jason Williams Photo: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com In the plastic cup-holder between Paul and his wife, the cell phone shudders awake. Abby flips aside the church bulletin and plucks the phone from the center console. The glowing, smudged screen reflects in her glasses. “Says it’s Chris. From work?” God damn it, he thinks. Sunday morning. Eleven […]
“Feel the Feelings and Drop the Story”
April 10, 2010 by Dessislava Berndt · 2 comments
Katerina Stoykova-Klemer’s interview with Susan Piver Susan Piver is a writer, teacher, and speaker on topics such as love, creativity, and spirituality. She is the New York Times bestselling author of The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say “I Do” and the award-winning How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own […]
A Review of Brian Russell’s Meeting Dad
March 30, 2010 by · 1 comment
Barry George Brian Russell’s Meeting Dad is a memoir of his efforts to reconcile with his natural father. The story unfolds with a sense of urgency and anticipation. Russell is a fourteen-year-old living in Buffalo; Bob Jaycox is a salesman now living in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with his second wife and family. In the […]
Brian Russell: “When the writing is flowing, there’s little better in the world”
March 20, 2010 by · 2 comments
Interview with Brian Russell by Andrew Micheli Brian Russell is the author of Meeting Dad: A Memoir, which is being released April 1, 2010 from Accents Publishing, Lexington, Kentucky. After more than twenty years of working in the theater as a director and producer of plays, musicals, and operas, Brian shifted his focus toward writing. […]