from The American Reader

It was past midnight and the street was empty when the cab parked at the construction site. Doug got out of the back seat, and staring at the ground the entire way, went over to the trunk to begin the struggle of taking his two massive suitcases out. Not that Doug needed that much clothing for a week in Miami. But he had no choice but to bring two: the longer the distance, the less time to see each other, the bigger the present.

His friends always teased him for being the only sophomore at Princeton with a long-distance relationship. Other than having to haul big presents through security checkpoint though (he didn’t trust baggage claim with a 4-foot vase), Doug was fine with it. He talked with his girlfriend as much as his friends talked with theirs; he just happened to text her. Not to mention, his friends texted their girlfriends as much as they talked to them as well, and so, in a way, had as much of a distanced relationship as he did. Continue reading →

Daniel Kwiatkowski reading at McNally Jackson Bookstore

The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards hosted a celebratory reading in a renowned independent NYC bookstore featuring a select group of Northeast Region-at-Large Gold Key award recipients. Daniel Kwiatkowski ’15 was invited to read his Gold Key Flash Fiction piece, “Can We Escape?”  The reading took place at McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street Wednesday, February 25, 2015 from 6pm to 8 pm. Despite being the penultimate reader, Daniel received a burst of applause for his story. Below is the winning piece, which Daniel originally wrote in NA’s Creative Writing Workshop as a personal essay and then converted to fiction. Congratulations, Daniel!

Can We Escape?

“Yes, the plane’s coming in tonight…. If anyone tries to escape kill them” my cab driver, Juan, muttered in Spanish into the cell phone he held close to his mouth. My dad was lost in his cell phone as Juan drove us back from a Puerto Rican resort’s golf course to our hotel. Armed with my years of high school Spanish class teachings, I listened and began to pick up on some words and phrases that seemed bizarre for the profession of the small man with a gray beard and fedora who held us caged in his cab: “avión viene de México esta noche, si?”, the plane comes in from Mexico tonight, yes?, “y podemos encajar cuarenta, si?”, and we can fit 40, yes?, “las muertes de anoche”, the dead from last night, and finally the sentence that caused me to nudge my dad, “si ellos tratan de escaper, matalos”, if they try to escape, kill them.” Continue reading →

This story by Gabrielle Poisson ’17 won First Place in the 2015 Writers Slate Fiction Contest sponsored by the Writing Conference, Inc.

The daylight was waning and the damp beach had descended into a cool lull. Over-sized men in beach towels hanging precariously around their hips strolled freely past the cramped shops; they clashed with the women from the suburbs returning home after their day at the beach, complicated wraps with bright tribal patterns clinging to their hips, gaudy jewelry bought in the overpriced boutiques hung from their ears, wrapped around their necks, hugging their bony fingers. An astonishing lack of children quieted the town. All had returned home from their days playing in the sand; the ice creams had melted and their hot pockets filled with damp dollar bills had been spent on fire crackers and corn dogs down at the pier. Nearly everyone had a place to go; there were few lingerers. Continue reading →

Photo by Gregory Dyer

This story by Kiran Damodaran ’17 won 2^nd Place in the 2015 Writers Slate Fiction Contest sponsored by the Writing Conference, Inc. Kiran explains, “The following piece attempts to tackle the difficult issues surrounding school shootings, including the way in which the shooters are portrayed in the news. The story focuses on the family and friends of the shooter and the lasting impression they are left with.”

Continue reading →

photo by David Naylor

Alicja Madloch’s fiction and poetry have been published in Almost 5Q, The Apprentice Writer, Black Fox Literary Magazine, BRICKrhetoric Literary & Visual Arts Journal, Canvas Literary Magazine, Cuckoo Quarterly, Pomona Valley Review, Teen Ink Online and Vademecum Magazine. She participated in National Novel Writing Month in 2013 and 2014 and is co-editor-in-chief of Prisms.

Happy Valentine’s Day

He likes to eat me up with his eyes and place his hands on my body. He likes to feed me with his fingers, the hair on his knuckles tickling my upper lip. He’s undeniably infatuated and clings to me when we’re together with a hidden urgency; a musty scent seems perpetually stretched out across my bed sheet, a reminder of him. Continue reading →

The following novella was begun by Mollie Wohlforth ’15 during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November 2013 and continued thereafter. She has another novel planned for NaNoWriMo 2014, so stay tuned!

For the record, this isn’t a story where things get found. Some things just fall through the cracks never to surface again. And I’m not going to make something up just so this story might have a better ending, cause that’s not really how real life works. It’s messy, and you lose things.

CHAPTER 1

We all live in Michiasport, Maine, right on the coast. There’s one main street that snakes its way up the hill from the harbor where everybody lives, and another that goes to the next hill, where the town is. Everything looks like it stepped right out of a Robert McCloskey book – the tiny school, the people who have known each other for generations, and the entire town that revolves around our main industry. Lobstering. Continue reading →

The following short story by James Blume won a 2014 Scholastic National Gold Medal for Flash Fiction. Please leave James your thoughts on his story.

“Are Rabbit’s Feet Really Lucky?

I was eight years old when I first saw my brother hurt an animal. We were at our summer home and I was still recovering from the end of the school year. My brother was four years older than I was and had just finished sixth grade.

That summer my brother was obsessed with traps and was always talking about how to ensnare an animal. He said it was simple. Get a string of metal wire and tie it like a noose. Make sure to leave the hole slightly larger than the animal’s foot. Once the animal steps on the trap, its foot will get stuck. The more the animal tries to escape, the tighter the noose pulls around it. The animal will rely on instinct and keep on pulling the wire and the wire will keep on digging into its skin.  The animal will be completely trapped.  Of course, my brother was smart enough to never say these things to our parents. But I heard them. Continue reading →

The following novel-in-progress was begun by Alicja Madloch ’15 during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November 2013. Bravo, Alicja!

               Prologue

Before I start, you must agree with my terms. The terms of use, as it were. I don’t want your pity, I don’t want this to turn into some cliché moral-including story, because the way it is, life has no permanent meaning or symbols or lessons in store for any of us. You can be empathetic, sure, because looking ahead of me I’m sure that there will be things that humiliate me beyond bonds, nights that I will cry blaming it on the cold.

Now that’s settled, I guess it’s applicable to introduce myself, especially since the plane is about to kick off and so is my Dramamine. My name is Maxene Mroz and I’m not the scary, pocket-knife-carrying bully pictured in my case file. It wasn’t my fault that people just can’t take a joke, that everybody flips out and falls down like frickin dominoes. Then again, maybe some people have flimsier spines; it takes less for them to crack. And that’s exactly where my story starts:

It was Thursday, the most miserable day of the most miserable month of September. The leaves were already falling off the trees, littering my path to school on the grey concrete. Honestly, there were more of them than rationally possible considering the ratio of leaves to trees in my neighborhood. I can distinctly remember them crunching beneath my boots, leaving slimy trails of dew on the brown leather. I walked the last few blocks with my friends Chelsea and Becky. They were excited about some new EP that came out early on iTunes. Myself, I was in a pretty messed up mood ‘cause my printer at home had stopped working and I needed to go to the lab early and wrestle with the paper-jamming machine.

It wasn’t until after first period that I realized the sinister attitude inside the mustard colored walls was heightened from its usual state of mild dread. I looked pretty presentable, but the hollow, fleeting looks I captured didn’t resemble the public’s usual reactions. Even Becky was slightly withdrawn and when I tried to grab her elbow, I think, she retreated.

Then, there were whispers. Continue reading →

The following novel-in-progress was begun by Mollie Wohlforth ’15 during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November 2013. Keep going, Mollie!

For the record, this isn’t a story where things get found. Some things just fall through the cracks never to surface again. And I’m not going to make something up just so this story might have a better ending, cause that’s not really how real life works. It’s messy, and you lose things.

CHAPTER 1

            We all live in Michiasport, Maine, right on the coast. There’s one main street that snakes its way up the hill from the harbor where everybody lives, and another that goes to the next hill, where the town is. Everything looks like it stepped right out of a Robert McCloskey book – the tiny school, the people who have known each other for generations, and the entire town that revolves around our main industry. Lobstering.

            Every lobstering family has at least one person up by three am who slips into their waders and boots and goes out to check on their pots, all while the rest of the town lays snug in their beds until the sun starts to rise. In families with teenagers, they are the ones who sacrifice their morning to scour the ocean floor for crustaceans before they go to school, in hopes of furthering their attempts to move out of this place. Our class has had the same 152 people since fetal development, so there’s really no way, or place to hide. Our high school is in an old, converted fish warehouse, ‘cause ten years ago some kids thought it would be fun to burn down the old school building, and the only standing structure large enough for the five hundred high school aged kids to move into was the old warehouse. The entire thing smells like old lobster shells and new paint, but we do have a view of the harbor through the window-covered eastern wall, which would be amazing, if I hadn’t seen it every day of my damn life. Luckily, I had Sylvia for sixteen glorious years of my life. She was my best friend, the kind who wiggles their way underneath your skin and into the very make up of your heart, and lives there forever. Continue reading →