2023 Digging Press Chapbook Award List of Finalists and Semi-Finalists. Winner will be announced in early February 2024. Continue reading 2023 Digging Press Chapbook Award Finalists and Semi-Finalists
The gnat, almost imperceptibly quiet except for its occasional cry, is AWOL. The gnat, a pet-microscopic-dragon-friend, explored and flew around and suited the room. Continue reading Stories No. 95 – Pablo Castro
I see the man’s face on the back wall of the shower. Empty-minded, I stare as the water splashes on the crown of my head. Continue reading Flash No. 30 – Marcelo Castro Salinas
Ten minutes had passed since Otto’s ‘be right out’ text came in. The sun was getting low, and the last family had already scooped their children up to go eat dinner. Continue reading Stories No. 93 – Josh Dale
The baby, on entering the world, already trails her ghost. If it were visible to humans, the ghost would look like a dark puff of smoke leaking from the mother writhing on the bed. Continue reading Stories No. 92 – Heidi Kasa
Doug Jacquier is a former not-for-profit CEO. His poems and stories have been published in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and India. Continue reading Community No. 78 – Doug Jacquier
Nayt Rundquist (they/them) is the Managing Editor of New Rivers Press and teaches publishing, creative writing, and literature courses at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Their writing can be found in The Citron Review, X-R-A-Y Lit Mag, Up North Lit, Etchings, and anthologized in Unbound: Composing Home. They live just outside of space and time with their artist-jeweler wife and their fifth-dimensional dogs. Continue reading Flash No. 29 – Nayt Rundquist
Hadley Moore’s collection NOT DEAD YET AND OTHER STORIES won Autumn House Press’s 2018 fiction contest and received many other commendations. Her work has appeared in MCSWEENEY’S, WITNESS, ALASKA QUARTERLY REVIEW, INDIANA REVIEW, and elsewhere, and she is an alum of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Continue reading Community No. 77 – Hadley Moore
Kim Farleigh has worked for NGO’s in Greece, Kosovo, Iraq, Palestine and Macedonia. He takes risks to get the experience necessary for writing. He also likes painting, art, bullfighting, photography and architecture, which might explain why this Australian lives in Madrid. Continue reading Stories No. 91 – Kim Farleigh
Anna Stolley Persky, a lawyer and award-winning journalist, lives in Northern Virginia. She’s pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at George Mason University. Her fiction has been published in Mystery Tribune, The Satirist, Bright Flash Literary Review, and The Plentitudes. Her poetry has been published in the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, Sad Girls Club Literary Blog, and The Closed Eye Open. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Pithead Chapel. Continue reading Flash No. 28 – Anna Stolley Persky
Catherine Martinez Torigian (she/her/hers) is a native of Brooklyn, NY, where she lives with her husband, teenage daughter, and mini-dachshund Olivier. She began writing fiction after earning a Ph.D. in Classics at Brown University and has taught Latin and ancient Greek in four of the five boroughs of New York City. Her fiction has appeared in Bellowing Ark and Digging Through The Fat. Continue reading Flash No. 27 -Catherine Martinez Torigian
Just a Girl in the Whirl
by Annie Wood
Lauren is counting down the days until her eighteenth birthday. For the last two years, she has been thrust into the role of primary caregiver to her two younger sisters and her mother after the sudden departure of her father. Addressing everyone else’s needs before her own, the real Lauren is relegated to dreams and middle-of-the-night writing sessions in the privacy of her bathtub. When her father makes an unexpected return into their lives, Lauren’s carefully kept façade begins to unravel, and she must re-establish her precarious balance in order to keep herself afloat. Continue reading Excerpt No. 5 – Annie Wood
Ben Umayam moved to NYC to write the Great American Filipino Gay Short Story. He worked for pollsters, then became a chef and then retired. He is working that short story in CO. He was published recently by The Midway Journal, BULL, The Phare, , Metaworker, and others. Continue reading Community No. 76 – Ben Umayam
Jonah Meyer is a poet, writer, and editor in North Carolina. His poetry and creative nonfiction has been published widely. Jonah plays guitar and piano, shoots photography, and studies neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy. He serves as Poetry Editor of Mud Season Review and Assistant Poetry Editor with Random Sample Review. Continue reading Community No. 75 – Jonah Meyer
Andrew Rihn is the author of Revelation: An Apocalypse in Fifty-Eight Fights (Press 53, 2020) and the chapbook O Hungry Star (Beir Bua, 2021). From 2019-2021 he wrote The Pugilist, a monthly boxing column for Into the Void magazine. He currently writes for The Fight City, a premier independent boxing site. Continue reading Community No. 74 – Andrew Rihn
Kathy Kremins is a retired public school teacher and coach. Her chapbook Undressing the World is forthcoming (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Kathy’s work appears in Soup Can Magazine, The Night Heron Barks, Lavender Review, The Stillwater Review, Divine Feminist: An Anthology of Poetry & Art by Womxn & Non-Binary Folx, Stay Salty: Life in the Garden State, and other publications. Continue reading Community No. 73 – Kathy Kremins
Abigail Carl-Klassen is a writer, researcher, poet, educator, translator, and activist. Raised in the oil fields of the Permian Basin, she earned an MFA in Bilingual Creative Writing from the UT El Paso. Her work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Catapult, and Guernica, among others. The 2nd printing of her chapbook, Ain’t Country Like You, is forthcoming from Digging Press. Continue reading Community No. 72 – Abigail Carl-Klassen
A first-generation Romanian American poet and educator, Roxana Cazan is the author The Accident of Birth (Main Street Rag, 2017) and Tethered to the Unexpected (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). She co-edited Voices on the Move: An Anthology by and about Refugees (Solis Press, 2020). Continue reading Community No. 71 – Roxana L. Cazan
henry 7. reneau, jr. does not Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram. It is not that he is scared of change, or stuck fast in the past; instead, he has learned from experience that the crack pipe kills. His work is published in Superstition Review, TriQuarterly, Poets Reading the News, Prairie Schooner, and Rigorous. Continue reading Community No. 70 – henry 7. reneau, jr.
Before Don Robishaw stopped working he was a Sailor, PCV, world-traveler, professor, and circus roustabout. Most recently he ran educational programs for homeless shelters. ‘Bad Paper Odyssey’ was a semi-finalist in the Digging Press Chapbook Series Competition. Multiple works have appeared in Literary Heist, Drunk-Monkeys, Crack-the-Spine, FFM, and other venues. Continue reading Community No. 69 – Don Robishaw
Christie Cochrell’s work has been published by a wide variety of journals and won several awards. Chosen as New Mexico Young Poet of the Year while growing up in Santa Fe, she’s recently published a volume of collected poems, Contagious Magic. She lives by the ocean in Santa Cruz, California. Continue reading Community No. 68 – Christie Cochrell
Stories by Jeanne Althouse (she/her) have been published in numerous literary journals, most recently in Catamaran Reader, Connotation Press, The Penman Review, The Closed Eye Open, Potato Soup Journal and The Plentitudes Journal. Her work has won several awards, been collected into a Chapbook, and twice nominated for a Pushcart. Continue reading Community No. 67 – Jeanne Althouse
Aida Zilelian is a first generation American-Armenian writer and educator. She is the author The Legacy of Lost Things, recipient of the 2014 Tololyan Literary Award. Continue reading Community No. 66 – Aida Zilelian
WINNERS
Morgan Christie – People Without Wings (fiction) and Rachelle Parker – Together We Remember the Gazelle (poetry)
Continue reading 2022 Digging Press Chapbook Results
A stranger called and I picked up my phone.
“Hello, how are you doing today?” said the voice from the other end. The voice belonged to a woman, an older woman. It was deep and luxurious, a perfect balance of grace and authority. Just from that simple hello, I could hear the weight of experience, a lifetime of training in forming the perfect first impression.
Before I met you, we went to the same party, but I don’t remember seeing you there. I like to pretend I was strangely compelled by the sight of you staggering around in a threadbare coat and loosened tie, your lips red from the bottle of wine you clutched, its green neck peeking halfway out of a paper bag. Continue reading Flash No. 26 – Jannitt Ark
A car’s life can be hard to imagine, but maybe not so difficult when the automobile comes back home one last time. Like most objects in the physical universe we occupy, it’s not hard to see when a car is going to wear out. Continue reading Flash No. 25 – Jason Arment
There once was a girl who lived in a little house in a pine wood. The pines were tall and thick with needles, and above them was a clear deep blue sky with large white clouds in it, solid-seeming white clouds that moved swiftly on a brisk wind, like boats on their way to some place or another. Continue reading Flash No. 24 – Lúa Margita Brau
Lena was raised on violin lessons and minimal parental supervision. Maestro Ludwig, her first violin teacher, was spiritually her only family. After early morning lessons, before she went off to school, they liked to relax together on the cool sheets of his unmade bed in his private studio in the Hyatt Regency, her violin lying between them. They smelled plumeria and coconut-scented sunscreen lotion from Kaanapali Beach through the one open window. Continue reading Stories No. 89 – Jeanne Althouse
I cannot rehearse the pathways of smoke, but I spend my entire life on the journey, my one particular part, small, wingless, and flattened. You would not guess it when meeting me alone and my host can be nearly gone, emaciated. I place my eggs upon her hair. But there’s a second host and more further south. I could migrate and release my benefactor. I could trade in my habitat. But in this way deceptive birds might find me sailing. Continue reading Flash No. 23 – Rich Ives
They offered me a job at the clinic near my house, and I took It because I had to keep up with rent while mami visited home country to nurse her mama for three months. I did not mind that It was a graveyard shift since the place was just a few bus stops away. My task was to receive packages and log their arrival in a binder. The delivery men wore khaki overalls and never spoke. As of now, those are the facts I can recall. Continue reading Stories No. 88 – Elinol López
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Penn State University would periodically send down these studies on dairy cows. The farmers would have to implement them whether they liked it or not, but it was always the cause of ridicule, of mockery, that the scientists at Penn State hadn’t gotten close to the udders of a single cow, had never been kicked by one, never saw the mastitis their directives were meant to clear up,… Continue reading Flash No. 22 – Richard Krause
You go to flip the omelet over, and it breaks. Ever so gently a turn, like you always do, and it still breaks. The innards are exposed. The eggs will continue to harden and soon burn. Continue reading Flash No. 21 – Josh Dale
The author confesses that this story has been written entirely by mistake. It begins with the mistake of an alarm clock opening and keeps piling them on: a stereotypical main character, a two-dimensional significant other, an unconvincing villain. Continue reading Flash No. 20 – KP Vogell
And then, slow as you like, Fernando reaches back and peels his cheeks apart. Staring over one shoulder, his lips wet from kissing, his hair still perfect despite all that rolling around.
#Erotica Continue reading Stories No. 87 – T. B. Grennan
“How many candles do you see? Mother? How many? Can you see how many? Sit up. It’s your daughter Eve. Count, Mother. There are 69.” Continue reading Stories No. 86 – John Francis Istel
In a brothel outside of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, an English archaeologist finds a clay tablet with Latin writings. After careful study, historians believe it is the reproduction of a letter written by John the Apostle. Continue reading Flash No. 19 – JP Infante
Read the Medication Guide that comes with AMBIEN before you begin taking the pill, or unless you can’t sleep. Which is ironic. Continue reading Flash No. 18 – Denise Tolan
I am folding my mom’s fancy clothes. Bright patterned dresses and diaphanous floral blouses from Bloomingdale’s. Bespoke wool pants, now impossibly baggy, from a shop on Madison. All the finery she once wore to Broadway plays and opera at the Met, to museums and lunches at upscale Manhattan restaurants. Continue reading Flash No. 17 – Sue Mell
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“Monkeys, time to go!” Papi yells in his firm but gravelly voice. I lag behind at the end of the K-Mart checkout counter, eyeing the Mars candy bars. Aleta, my younger sister, kicks my heels. I trudge forward almost bumping into a white woman pushing a cart who suddenly stops after hearing Papi. Her lips stretch into a worldwide oval, ruby red lipstick smeared on her cigarette-stained teeth. Continue reading Stories No. 85 – Mario Duarte
You are no earth-bound love
Spoke the girl to the God of the Sun. Continue reading Hybrid No. 1 – Emma Eisler
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Lorenzo Rivas stirred a seventh packet of sugar into his coffee. He wondered how much of his twelve-minute break he’d spent staring at the barista’s arm. Continue reading Stories No. 84 – C. Adán Cabrera
In today’s Community, we are honored to re-introduce prose and poetry by Andrew Rihn, Ben Umayam, and Chris Vola. Andrew Rihn The Pugilist #15: Rocky and Catholic Meatmaking “I’ve seen the movie Rocky, I don’t know, like a hundred times. (OK not really, but still a lot.) Despite the repeated viewings, there are two scenes I always misremember…” Into the VoidNovember 15, 2020 ———————- The Pugilist #18: … Continue reading Community No. 65
In today’s Community, we are honored to re-introduce prose and poetry by Christie Cochrell and Alex Wells Shapiro. Christie Cochrell Death in Tesuque “My father and I left Tesuque on Monday as soon as it got light. So when they found the body in the swimming pool later that morning, strangled and ingloriously dead, they guessed we’d had something to do with it…” Fiction on … Continue reading Community No. 64
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One day (which we must all understand to mean many years ago now) a girl in her mother’s kitchen cuts a lock of her shiny hair, sets it in resin, and promises to live forever. When she is ninety-three and dying, she calls grey loved ones into the room to give these instructions: Continue reading Flash No. 16 – Taylor V. Card
Winner Submersion by Marie Baléo Continue reading 2021 Digging Press Chapbook Results
In today’s Community, we are honored to re-introduce poetry and prose by Juan Wynn, Jr. and Jeanne Althouse. Juan Wynn, Jr. For All the Half-Children “The first time someone referred to you as my half-brother…” ———————- Portrait of Enduring Love as a Seasonal Haircut “Two years ago, my mother tradedthick ropes of kite string dreadsfor an afro cloud of frost…” ———————- When You Hum, I’m … Continue reading Community No. 63
In today’s Community, we are honored to re-introduce poetry and prose by Lucia Orellana Damacela and Andi Boyd. Lucia Orellana Damacela Sifting “a remote control morning. baking shows. digitized feelings. cyber social distance. video-called closeness. the screen the new skin. some earrings and a navy sweater over pjs an ensemble…” PankAugust 11, 2020 ———————- At Sea “The boat tremblesas if it has seen an old … Continue reading Community No. 62
In today’s Community, we are honored to re-introduce prose and poetry by Denise Tolan and by Zoë Biggs. Denise Tolan Mercury Rising “I see my dead father from time to time. He drives through our old neighborhood in a late model Mercury;…” Crack the SpineMay 20, 2020 ———————- Thank a Bad Girl “There are, of course, bad girls. Bad girls who open wide for a Xanax … Continue reading Community No. 61
In today’s Community, we are honored to re-introduce poetry and prose by Kathy Kremins and Merridawn Duckler. Kathy Kremins Blowing That Trumpet Like Miles “Full moon on Friday the 13th radiated circles of light like the slowly slapping waves of a low Jersey tide, luminous white, a queen wearing a crown…” The Night Heron BarksSummer 2020 Merridawn Duckler First Patty, then Others “We had never … Continue reading Community No. 60
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