Sydney Strange has been writing and directing since she was in middle school, her passion for storytelling and film driving her throughout the past decade to make numerous short films, pilots, and more. With a strong focus on how people love and feel, Sydney focuses on trying to tell relatable, emotional driven stories that can represent everyone.
Shalini Singh has been published in Oberon Magazine, Berkeley Poetry Review, SUSPECT, Hobart and Hayden’s Ferry Review among others. The daughter of a mathematics teacher and an ex-lawyer herself, she is a final year MFA CWE candidate at Iowa State University where she binge feels, binge reads and binge watches stuff while grounding herself in meditative research.
Just as I was about to close my therapy office for the day, a mysterious figure arrived at my door. I could only make out his silhouette, for a brilliant aura radiated from him. From some unseen vantage, angels trumpeted his arrival, their heavenly fanfare rendering me mute. Hark and behold! Before me stood Jesus Christ, Son of Man. When…
The Compton Creek is the Los Angeles River’s southernmost tributary, the only one that starts in the inner city. Its headwaters come from the street storm drains of South Central Los Angeles. Other LA River tributaries like the Tujunga Wash, Arroyo Seco, Rio Hondo, Pacoima Wash and the Burbank Western Wash flow downstream from the northern foothills of either the…
[1] Bulk of the stuff underfoot Becoming the bulk of you Stuffed with its rolled green rug Churning that which turned sun into sugar A patch of clover I sat sifting through Sucking dandelion milk from its stem Milk so named for its rare opacity Bleeding from my woven crown Yellow and delicious. [2] I was reading Leaves of Grass…
LIGHTS UP. A small, bland waiting room. Used furniture. Old magazines. Bad carpet. Weird paintings. Plastic plants. Muted Muzak. A middle-aged lady, Claire, sits looking a bit shocked and confused. There’s a knock at the door and a young man enters. It’s Steve. He looks like a Jehovah’s Witness with a clipboard, pen and white walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.…
Peter Sands was first commissioned by the BBC in London for his original screenplay The Spiral. He wrote Undertow and Visions In The Fire and wrote and directed the Academy Awards® qualifying short, Blacktop Afternoon. Peter’s writing credits include SyFy’s The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, Girl On A Train, The Other Day and most recently the story for Take…
One Whiskey Jag West of Amboy, two long snakes of rail stretch, coal-black, into horizon. A dusty, dead moth of a caboose, buckled over iron ore wheels. Warped, greyed— a wheeze of boards. One splintered eyebrow. One cataract eye. Your palm flattened, reaching before I can breathe the word burn, sizzling I leave you standing, fused, your wind-chapped lips cracked…
Bless the rubber band that holds night around the horizon. Bless the dry rot creeping through its tension. Bless its breaking. Bless the way the light spills out like shiny pennies from a roll. Bless the bank of days where I make my withdrawals, bless my balance in the black, bless the credit of my soul. Bless the stash of…
I don’t know when the decision-makers brought in two trailers and divided them in half to make four classrooms. They were like that when I arrived. Slapped between the main building and the ball fields, the big playground constantly beckoned to us. The bank of windows on the other side of the classroom faced the cafeteria. Isolated and tucked away…