Description
by James Daniels (Greensboro, NC)
Selma is a community that, despite its pain, holds a depth of spirit that deserves love and care, a place where redemption is sought through the resilience of its people. God-Damned Eden speaks to the tension within a place that is both deeply flawed and deeply loved. Like the fallen earth in scripture, Selma is marked by human shortcomings and struggles, yet it remains beloved, resilient, and layered with beauty. This Eden-like quality isn’t pristine; it’s a paradise that bears scars—a place both blessed and “damned” by the realities of history and hardship. Yet, within those imperfections lies the work of restoration, an ongoing call to see and honor the beauty that persists.
by Pam Durban (Chapel Hill, NC)
From its genesis in a box of staples containing 5,000 staples and the thought, “My God, how can I ever use 5,000 staples in the time left to me on this earth?”, Pam Durban’s Solving for X gathers flashes of color in a moment where the world is darkening. In flash essays that are new and startling for this writer of fiction, Durban fully leverages the form’s ability to evoke brief encounters with mortality, love, and time. A door opens, a light shines, something speaks, and you listen.
Even As They Curse Us (Inch #52)
by Grace MacNair (Fairview, NC)
From North Carolinian poet Grace MacNair, the poems in Even As They Curse Us combine historical research, clinical expertise, and personal experience to examine biopolitical power and reproductive historical context. Each piece moves within and beyond grief to examine history and challenge what poems—and bodies—can be and what they can hold. MacNair’s background as a poet and a healthcare professional, as well as her studies in women’s contemporary and historical experiences, inform this fierce, insightful collection: challenging readers to engage with history, medicine, and the inextricably powerful and dangerous realities of inhabiting reproductive bodies, Even As They Curse Us will move readers to imagine more expansive possibilities for care and justice.
In the Gem Mine Capital of the World (Inch #43)
by Rose McLarney (Franklin, NC)
Franklin, a small town in Western North Carolina where rubies and sapphires have been mined for generations, has earned the moniker “The Gem Capital of the World.” In her stirring short collection, In the Gem Mine Capital of the World, Rose McLarney delicately unearths the true meaning of the mines, of their gems and their histories.
Sing Me a Lesser Wound (Inch #42)
by Junious Ward (Charlotte, NC)
At times rhapsodic, at times elegaic, Junious Ward’s Sing Me a Lesser Wound parses Southern masculinity and interrogates the concept of home as a place we have to leave—and sometimes spend the rest of our lives looking for.
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