Chiaroscuro: An Anthology of Virtue and Vice
Laura Mahal is thrilled to be in such excellent company in this compilation of stories and poems on the subjects of vice and virtue. You’ll find Laura’s short story, “Aspen Leaf Ultimatum,” as well as two poems: “Why I Threw My Daughter” and “Bedbugs as Sand Men.” Laura has a bonus short story in this publication, under a pen name. Chiaroscuro follows on the tales of NCW’s 2019 anthology, Rise, which won the 2020 Colorado Book Award. (At that time, Laura was on the editing team.) She’s honored to have her work featured along with many talented artists in both prose and poetry. We hope you enjoy this foray into worlds of darkness and light.
The Road She's Traveled
From Dani Grant, creator of the anthology project: “The Road She’s Traveled is a celebration of our everyday, informal rites of passage–a compilation of powerful stories told by women, written and edited by women . . . for anyone who has ever come to a fork in the road and had to make a choice. The women gathered here offer us their stories of resilience and insight and it’s like we’re sharing homemade cider around the table: refreshing, effervescent, and unfiltered. Sit down with us and we’ll hand you a glass. Cheers.”
“[Laura Mahal] weaves together an essay-in-a-list and an anecdotal essay to tell the story of a young woman/girl (the same person at different ages) who further asserts her own independence. The list part of the essay describes how the young woman meets a boy, then almost gets sucked into his religious cult, but manages to separate herself from it. The anecdotal part of the essay tells the story of a 4-year-old who goes to a lake with her prissy-ish sister to meet up with their brothers to fish, more or less. This part of the essay brings in different metaphors about being trapped and getting free—free from the confining roles that might be forced upon, free from feeling like we have to follow the status quo, and free from how others taunt us and/or treat us. Overall, this essay is about finding one’s independence and how to discover your own way of making it through the world.”
Fresh Starts: Tales from the Pikes Peak Writers
“After the fires are out, the smoke has cleared, the divorce is over, the widow has stopped wearing black, the sun has risen, the monsters are dead, the world is saved (or destroyed!), the storm has calmed, and the trouble is over . . . what do you do next?”
Encore: Prize Poems 2020
Encore Prize Poems is a collection of the top award-winning poems from the 2020 National Federation of State Poetry Societies annual contests. These poems were chosen from more than 6,500 submissions by poets across the nation and from Canada, the United Kingdom and Spain. The anthology’s wide variety includes visually unique shape poems; well-structured forms like pantoum, villanelle, and sonnet; and the short forms of 3-line haiku, 13-line trimeric, 60-syllable minute poems. Diverse viewpoints bring fresh personal interpretations to such wide-ranging subjects as wolves and hometown heroes, women’s power and environmental issues, books and borders. NFSPS invites you to explore cover-to-cover, finding the unique passion, insight and inspiration of many voices on many subjects.
Resistance, 2020
Resistance, Guest Edited by Brad Wetzler. With contributors from all over the globe, our 2020 Young Writers Contest Winners, and our Featured Writer Martín Espada, Resistance is a powerful statement of our First Amendment Rights.