by Gabriella Herkert

I learned more from the other writers at the Maui Writers’ Conference than I did from the presenters. True, I paid my conference fee to see the likes of John Saul and Terry Brooks but I learned the most from Janet Spurr.

(read on…)

by Jody Reale

It was not so long after Our Ugly Wedding that I made a friendly gesture toward my husband, Alex. We were in the car, taking a springtime drive to Boulder. We were going to walk down the pedestrian mall while eating ice cream, watching the buskers and musicians perform, but not the Rasta contortionist who has been folding himself up inside a small Lucite box for 10 years. That was old news.

(read on…)

We have a new review from Professor David R. Turner. This time, he covers the issue of slavery in America and takes a look at Thirty Years a Slave, the autobiography of slave Louis Hughes. Spin by our reviews section, or follow the above link, to read more. (read on…)

by Emily Raboteau

Bernie-ism 18.1: It is a privilege to be able to invent oneself. It is also a burden.

My big brother Bernard took great pains to learn how to talk Black. Street Black. Prophet Black. Angry Black. Which wasn’t something you heard a lot of where we grew up. It started when his voice suddenly changed. One day, he spoke in the smooth tenor treble of a choir-boy angel, and the next he possessed the devilish bass of Barry White. Once he was blessed with that depth, Bernie culled some of the diction from our father’s brilliant friend, Professor Lester Wright and pulled the rest from Public Enemy. The result was stunning.

(read on…)

by Mary L. Tabor

From The Woman Who Never Cooked: Stories, Mid-List Press, April 2006. First published by Chelsea.

Ruth had found one silver earring lying on her bureau, opened her jewelry box, and discovered the burglary. She’d opened the top bureau drawer and saw, instead of the little white cardboard box, a faint outline of dust where the box had lain, and she was stricken with loss. The items in the box had belonged to Ruth’s mother. The wedding band etched with forget-me-nots, the gold locket, the ivory cameo with the raised but barely etched body of a woman, the choker of pearls. In the burglar’s hands. Ruth could not touch them, could not put on the gold chain with the wedding band askew, a circle off center as it hung on an angle from the chain. Lost. Another part of her mother who had died the year before. More loss. More than she could take? And then the fear. The burglar. Who was he?

(read on…)