• The Thing in the Cellar

    “Wanna see something?” Tommy Brooks said. Jordan was tying his shoelaces on the porch steps of his home. It was a warm, summer day, and Jordan was bored. He and his mom had recently moved to a small house she had inherited from a great-aunt, in a town on the outskirts of nowhere. His old […]

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  • Recommendation: Land of Love and Drowning

    iphanie Yanique’s 2014 debut Land of Love and Drowning is an epic tale tracing three generations of the Bradshaw family on the Virgin Islands.

  • Recommendation: The Conductors, by Nicole Glover

    If you love mysteries, historical fiction, and fantasy, then you’ll love Nicole Glover’s 2021 novel The Conductors. Featuring one of the most compelling duos in fiction, Hetty and Benjy, The Conductors takes place in Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward during the Reconstruction Era, when Hetty and Benjy, former conductors for the Underground Railroad, use astrologically-divined magic to […]

  • Every Boy Should Have A Man, Review

    Every Boy Should Have A Man, written by Preston L. Allen, whose previous works include Jesus Boy and All or Nothing, is a fabulist tale set in a world of oafs and pet humans.

  •  The Night Nurse on Ward C

    The screaming starts at night. Like zombies rising from the dead, the patients come out of their drug-induced hazes and start to howl. “Christina!” shouts one woman. “My pen, gimme back my pen,” cries another. Nurses and orderlies race to their rooms to secure the restraints and administer their meds. The patients violently resist, trashing […]

  • Lost and Found in Iowa

    One summer, I found myself lost in a Greyhound station somewhere in Iowa. It was 1999, and I was on my way to Iowa City to attend a week-long writing festival hosted by the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop. Established in 1936, Iowa’s famous workshop launched the careers of some of the most celebrated writers […]

  • Reverie

    From Adam’s rib she came and out of the snake’s mouth she went. She has no regrets, not really, except that she hates the periods and misses her garden. On days when she is feeling less than herself, she remembers those long afternoons alone under the apple tree where she’d daydream while cool breezes blew […]

  • Hush

    We didn’t say nothing when we got on the bus. Just took our seats near the back and kept our mouths shut like Mama told us to. We didn’t know where they was taking us, but they never tell us nothing. Minny and them got took six months ago. Don’t nobody know where they went. […]

  • New Stories

    Hi, all. Crazy, exciting times we’re in now. New times ahead. Some of it will be same-old, same-old, and some will be new. I’ll be glad when I can wake up in the morning and not wonder what new hell is going on. Regardless, we’re closing in on the train wreck that is 2020 with […]

  • Back Again

    It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. A lot has happened in the almost two years since then. Some of it not so good. But some…well, promising. The good news is that I published my first novel. The Naxos Academy of Psychic Studies for Colored Girls is now available on iTunes Store. You can also […]