RASMA HAIDRI
Rasma Haidri grew up in Tennessee and makes her home on the arctic seacoast of Norway. She is the author of As If Anything Can Happen (Kelsay, 2017) and three college textbooks. Her writing has appeared in literary journals including Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, and Fourth Genre and has been widely anthologized in North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. She is a current MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia and serves as a reader for the Baltic Residency program. Awards for her work include a Vermont Studio residency, the Southern Women Writers Association emerging writer award in creative non-fiction, the Wisconsin Academy of Arts, Letters & Science poetry award, and a Best of the Net nomination. Visit her at www.rasma.org.
Title: Palimpsest
First Line(s):
After the funeral I unfurl
the rug my father brought with him
from India in 1951 –
a dairy farm appears in the middle, facing north,
a pony to the east,
Genre: Poetry
Publication Date: Summer 2018
Journal: Switched On Guttenberg
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Title: Two Poems: Currents / Trust
First Line(s):
When you hand me a handle-less teacup
with blue porcelain flowers,
I think of my mother,
saying science believed
in no such thing as a blue flower,
Genre: Poetry
Publication Date: Spring 2019
Journal: Young Ravens Literary Review
JIM ROSS
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits after retiring from public health research in 2015 in hopes of resuscitating his long-neglected left brain. He’s since published nonfiction, poetry, and photography in over 100 journals and anthologies in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Publications include Barren, Columbia Journal, Friends Journal, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, Kestrel, The Atlantic, and The Manchester Review. Forthcoming: Granta, Roanoke Review, Typehouse. In the past two years, he wrote and acted in his first play; and, a nonfiction piece led to a role in a soon-to-be-released, high-profile documentary limited series. Jim and his wife—parents of two health professionals and grandparents of five preschoolers—split their time between the city and the mountains.
Title: Claiming Home
First Line(s):
Under light drizzle, a cable TV reporter stood at the corner of Burdett Avenue and Quadra Street, leaning onto her camera like a pilgrim resting on her staff, alert for signs of movement. “They have a spokesperson, but so far I haven’t gotten her to talk with me,” she whispered. When a police cruiser whipped around the corner, she tore down the street, hoping to capture video footage of police interactions with Tent City residents.
Genre: Nonfiction
Publication Date: September 26, 2019
Journal: The Manchester Review
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Title: Picture Perfect: The Postcard Battle over Women’s Suffrage
First Line(s):
“We had a terrific discussion tonight about women’s suffrage,” Ysabel, age 20, wrote in her journal. “I had my robe on and was lying at the foot of Alice’s bed. When Alice finally burst into tears, distressed to see George and me so angry with one another, I picked up a large box of candy from the bed and crashed it over George’s head. Candy flew in all directions and sparks flew from George’s eyes. I left him, still furious, to comfort Alice as well as he could.”
Genre: Nonfiction
Publication Date: October 2019
Journal: Barren Magazine
MANDY-SUZANNE WONG
Bermudian Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s internationally acclaimed debut novel, Drafts of a Suicide Note (Regal House, 2019), was a finalist for American Book Fest’s Best Book Award for General Fiction, the Eyelands Book Award for a published novel, and the Permafrost Book Prize as well as a Conium Review Book Prize semifinalist, a Santa Fe Writers’ Project Literary Award shortlistee, and a PEN Open Book Award nominee. She is also the author of the fiction chapbook Awabi (Digging, 2019), winner of the Digging Press Chapbook Series Award, and the nonfiction chapbook Artificial Wilderness, winner of the Selcouth Station Environmental Chapbook Competition (Selcouth, 2020). Her essay collection Listen, we all bleed (New Rivers, 2021) was named a finalist and awarded an honorable mention in the Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize Competition, and her story “Coconut Octopus” took first prize in the Eyelands International Flash Fiction Competition. In addition to her regular column at Manqué Magazine, her work appears or is forthcoming in Entropy, Waccamaw, The Spectacle, The Island Review, Quail Bell, The Deck Hand, Black Warrior Review, Permafrost, and several other venues. She’s also the author of the essay collection and exhibition catalog, Animals Across Discipline, Time & Space (McMaster, 2020).
Title: The Slip
First Line(s):
I was standing in line with my papers, thinking nothing in particular. Actually, I was probably thinking I had better things to do than stand there with my papers. And, all these other people’s papers, with which those other people were standing around too.
Genre: Fiction
Publication Date: April 14, 2018
Journal: Quail Bell
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Title: Bubbles
First Line(s):
I knew the dog was blind because while combing the shop I nearly tripped over the scrawny, scruffy Pomeranian—which didn’t pompom the way those dogs are supposed to but instead appeared to have stuck a shivering toe into a socket—and considering this sorry specimen of life in this spoiled world, I said, “I like you, too.”
Genre: Fiction
Publication Date: October 13, 2019
Journal: The Spectacle
Photo Credit: © tomertu / Adobe Stock
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