The Mirror

By Joanna Laufer Ten days after my mother’s surgery, she asked me to look at her body without a breast. As the doctor removed the gauze dressing and Steri-Strips, the nurse held up a hand mirror by the stem. I was twenty-three. I stood beside her, leaning against blue crinkled paper on the exam table, squinting at the mirror like it was harsh light. The stitches were red, raised, and ran diagonally across her wound. The remaining breast, partly covered by the open cotton gown, was so large next to what was missing. What my mother said she remembered—and said for…

TCR Talks with Tyrell Johnson about His Second Novel, The Lost Kings

By Nicholas Belardes In Tyrell Johnson’s second novel, The Lost Kings, Jeanie King has to stitch together a violent, uncertain past in order to understand the mysterious disappearance of her brother and father. We’re right there with her, tight amid all her reliability and unreliability as a narrator. At times, her traumatic story reads like a case study of the dangers American families face post-war, post-Covid, post–anything collectively horrible. We connect to her because she helps us see who we could become if we don’t seek to infiltrate the trauma that may inhabit us. Amid all of this connectivity between…

Fiction: Magic Show by Michael Long

Something that’s weird about me is that I have oven mitts for hands. Not actual oven mitts; that’s just what one of my old foster parents called them. He said it meant I was going to grow a lot in a few years. It never really mattered much to me, except for it looking kind of funny with the rest of me being normal size and my hands being so big. Large palms, long fingers—you get it. It wasn’t until I moved into my last foster home that I finally found a reason for them. My new foster dad had…

Two Poems by Ellen June Wright 

You Ask Me Where It Comes From   It comes from anywhere and everywhere.                     It’s the irritant that starts the nacre’s flow  within the shell, the thing that captures your                    attention and won’t let go. Somewhere in the back of your brain as you go about common duties:                      washing dishes, folding laundry,  it begins to form until you pry your mind                     open with a sharp knife, move the mantle  of the mollusk and roll the pearl between your fingers.                      Inspiration can come slowly, grow like a jewel  at the sea’s bottom or like a stone flung from across                      the street by some rude boy—drawing blood.  That’s…

Two Poems by Nancy McCabe

Photo by Kevin Jay Photography Pajama Dolls   They weren’t just any dolls, these gifts from our grandparents, but, an aunt said, special ones, with skirts you could unzip to reveal secret compartments for storing pajamas. My cousin Melinda’s was pink, mine blue, vastly unfair, since my room was pink and hers was blue but our aunt said it would be rude to swap and it was just another example of how Melinda, with her tiny feet and sweet voice< got all the girl credit. The perfume my aunts and uncles gave me made me sneeze, and the bracelets I…

Voices

By Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera Driving east on Interstate 10, I crank up the a/c. The sun peeks up over distant mountains, blinds me despite my designer sunglasses. Damn! It has been years since I trekked across this desert. Swore the last time I’d never do it again.  I don’t remember much about last time. Just knew when I left, there was a lot worth forgetting. Squeezed my eyes tight and wrung out all the water. Haven’t shed a tear since. Haven’t drank a drop neither. Almost ten years sober. And now I gotta cross this barren desert with no one…

Book Review: Big Bad Wolf

By Sara Marchant In Suleikha Snyder’s Big Bad Wolf, the world is full of strangers and strangeness, but it is recognizably our world. “Different,” she tells us, “unequal, but same.” The novel is set in the Divided States of America after the Darkest Day of 2016, where Sanctuary Cities are more than lip service and operate to protect the rights of the LGBTQ, women, and Black and Brown brethren as well as supernatural citizens, and the only unbelievable aspect of the story is a hero who prefers giving head to receiving it. Joe, an anti-heroic (literal) alpha male, is awaiting…

Interview: A Conversation with the Ladies of the Fright

By Kathryn E. McGee I had the privilege of meeting Lisa Quigley and Mackenzie Kiera while studying with them in the UC Riverside Palm Desert MFA Program about seven years ago. We were beginning our careers by working on horror and dark fiction projects, and I remember how remarkable it felt to suddenly know these amazing women who were trying to do the same thing I was—make sense of the darkness in a way that translated for readers. Since we graduated, Lisa and Mackenzie have gone on to do so much, creating an award-winning horror literature podcast as the “Ladies…

Voice to Books — Episode Two

In this episode, we asked our reviewers—readers from various marginalized communities—to write about any book by any marginalized author that has stayed with them in some way. Their choices spanned the globe and reached deep into what it means to be human. Ranging from nonfiction to thrillers, these four books take readers around the world and to different time periods, yet all focus on human elements, such as family, death, sexuality, and survival. Each book tells a tale, whether fictionalized or difficult truths, that highlights the diverse elements of what it means to be human.    Incidents of Travel in…