January 2026 | nonfiction
Identity
You have a love-hate relationship with eagles.
It’s the national animal for your home nest, also the national emblem for your chosen nest.
In the end, it’s all just a bunch of letters and feathers. If you’re lucky, some numbers, too, but let’s be honest, your A# doesn’t define what your mom used to feed you for breakfast, or the classical literature you read in your first language and later in your second language and then – yes, because you’re committed to excellence – your third language. Neither do the W— forms your spouse had to fill out to sponsor you into this country that said you should, could never be a burden and you should never break a law and you would not be allowed to sit on a jury or vote, unless – unless! – you paid X amount of $ and filled out a gazillion forms and studied for a test about something called civics –
but when you do, you question the test questions and especially what the answers have to do with what is now happening within these borders and whether along the line when you did the dishes and paid the taxes and taught your children proper English and told them not to break any laws you somehow misunderstood something about eagles all along.
Their calls, it turns out, are puny.
Shrill, really – look at me but then look away while I do something not worthy.
They may glide majestically and drop a kingly feather here or there, but they often feast on what others have gleaned and achieved and scavenge when no one is watching.
You get a crick in your neck squinting up at them and then you stumble because you forgot where your feet really belong.
To label something as royal or emblematic because it looks and hoots like an eagle – naw, you lose faith in that, and also in those random numbers and letters printed on documents that were supposed to hold your destiny in inky hands, but then really just lied about who you are and what keeps you safe in this place in which you had hoped to land.
Alina Zollfrank
Alina Zollfrank dreams trilingually in the Pacific Northwest. She believes artists and writers are humanity’s true pulse, social media might just kill our essence, and produce should be shared with neighbors. Her work has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and recently appeared in SAND, Door Is A Jar, Tint, and Cholla Needles, with more forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Salt Hill, Reckon Review, and Heavy Feather Review. Alina is a grateful recipient of the 2024 Washington Artist Trust Grant and committed disability advocate.
January 2026 | nonfiction
Not Another Tragic Fattie
Your new sixth-grade class already had its own rhythms, inside jokes, and hierarchy. Like, it was already over halfway through the school year.
And there was this fat girl—like really fat. Like, nearly 200lbs-fat.
She was such a nerd. Like, during oral book reports in front of the class, hers had weird titles like Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, Openers of Old Oregon Volume No. 1.
She was super into Jesus. Like, she quoted Bible verses and invited people to her church for some sort of club on Wednesday nights with a weird name: AWANA. Kinda like marijuana except it had nothing to do with weed because that would have been cool.
She seemed sorta poor. Like, she didn’t wear Esprit sweatshirts and Guess jeans like the other girls. Her shirts had uneven stitches on material that was too thick or the wrong color. And she had pants that looked like they were trying to be jeans except there were no belt loops or fly but buttoned up on the side.
The fat kid is always picked on, right? Like, in every movie or TV show or after school special where there’s a fat kid. I mean, have you ever heard of a fat kid who wasn’t bullied?
Except nobody said anything when you said whatever it was you said to make fun of me—maybe that I had a fat butt? Like, they didn’t say much of anything at all to you after that. I felt a certain schadenfreude seeing you sitting alone on a swing at recess, even as I understood you had said what you said in an effort to belong. I did not know then how to reconcile my feelings of vindication and relief with Christian charity (which I work hard to practice though I’m not as Evangelical these days).
Even though I went to a different elementary school every year (because yeah, I was sorta poor), I had little experience with other kids teasing me about my weight. Like, I have only one other memory before you: in second grade two boys shouted something at recess about me being fat—though I cannot remember what. My girlfriends yelled something back at them, and we went back to playing whatever it was we were playing.
Rates of bullying against fat kids vary wildly. Like, anywhere between 19% to 60% depending on how it is measured (I’m totally still a nerd). Those numbers mean that there are a whole lot of fat kids who don’t get bullied.
The fat kid is not a guaranteed victim. Like, being fat (current weight: 268lbs) need not be a tragic trope.
Michelle Strausbaugh
Michelle Strausbaugh is a chronic illness management specialist working from a bed in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Hippocampus Magazine (and she’s still buzzed that it was nominated for a Pushcart).
October 2025 | nonfiction
I stole your handwriting:
Dear Elsie,
I know it’s been a while since we last connected. It’s been at least 12 years now, bar the occasional Instagram like or Christmas card from your mother. I have something to confess. You might have caught on in the fourth grade — and maybe that is the real reason why we stopped sending letters to each other after you moved away to Virginia — but I spent nine whole months attempting to copy your style of handwriting.
Maybe it was jealousy. It was definitely jealousy. What nine-year-old wouldn’t be jealous of the classmate that consistently wins drawing contests for litter clean-up and yearbook covers? Maybe one that had grown up with siblings, but that wasn’t me.
In February of fourth grade, you went through a phase where you’d dot all of your i’s with teeny-tiny hearts. It was novel — brilliant, even. I’d never seen such a spectacle and I was beside myself. What could I do to match your artistry? I tried smiley faces. I tried tiny stars. Nothing seemed to click. Thankfully, that phase was short-lived, but the two weeks it lasted made “free-write time” a waking nightmare.
For a good, long while, I relished every compliment. I had made your handwriting my own. I had earned those compliments. When I reached young adulthood, the mask started to slip. After all, I hadn’t really developed my own handwriting. I believed that I was living a lie… but then I thought about it for two seconds and realized that at that point in my life, the way I wrote was going to be my script for the rest of my life. I was past the point of developing fine motor skills — so, why should I care if I copied your handwriting in elementary school. It’s not like we’re going to sit next to each other in Ms. Kelly’s dusty, air condition-less room ever again.
In short: I stole your handwriting. It’s mine now. It’s kind of like a squatter’s rights situation we have going on here. And because I don’t know what yours looks like at this point in our lives, I’m assuming you can’t get your old script back. Maybe it looks even more polished now, or maybe you picked up cursive.
You might be a calligrapher or a sign artist at Trader Joe’s. I have no real way of knowing based on your social media presence, but I sincerely hope you’re doing well. Your Our My handwriting has served me well. Thank you.
All my love.
Carlin Steere
Carlin Steere
Carlin Steere is an experimental personal essayist and poet, dividing her time between the New England shoreline and Tampa, Florida. Her work has been published by Yale News, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and the Exeter Green Words Poetry Anthology — among other publications.
October 2025 | nonfiction
Last Dance
Take politicians, for example. Some know when to bow out gracefully; others hang on doggedly, even after their health, energy, and mental acuity have begun to compromise their effectiveness. (Sorry, Joe, that includes you.) The time of reckoning seems to hover around the age of 80. Some still claim good health and all their marbles and see no reason not to keep going. Bernie at 83 and Nancy at 85—still fighting the good fight. Others may yearn for the calm and quiet of private life, be ready to retire from the rat race.
I ran my last half marathon at 80, my last 10K a year later. My race times were still good, my legs still strong, but I didn’t want to wait for something to go wrong. It was time, and I’ve had no doubts, no regrets. A friend is going strong at 84, and runners in their 80s are still clocking the miles and crossing the finish line at the Boston Marathon every year. I cheer their successes but don’t yearn to be among them.
There’s no retirement age for writers, no urgency that might compel them to stop. Alice Munro and Philip Roth called it quits at around 80, though I’ll bet both could have kept producing quality work if they’d chosen to. Like Margaret Atwood, her creativity and energy seemingly boundless at 85. My friend Priscilla Long published a book about creativity in old age at 79, her fifth book since turning seventy, and said that she had plans for ten more.
Age isn’t the determining factor, but here I am at 81 wondering if it’s time to throw in the towel. I’m in excellent health, can still wield a pencil, type fast, read fine print on paper and screen. Yet writing has become a struggle. I moan to friends: the well is dry. Dredging and pumping yield nothing. Is it temporary or permanent? Have I said all I want to say?
A wise friend advises, “Don’t stay too long at the dance when you feel there is no dance left in you.” But how do you recognize that feeling? I’ve kicked off my dancing shoes, and I enjoy sitting it out, watching and listening from my seat on the sidelines. Maybe this is it; maybe I’m done. But then I pick up a beat … I start tapping my toes … my body sways with the rhythm. Maybe once more around the floor?
Alice Lowe
Alice Lowe’s flash nonfiction has been published this past year in Broken Teacup, Bluebird Word, Masque & Spectacle, Painted Pebble Lit Mag, Skipjack Review, In Short, Drifting Sands, and Burningword. She has been twice cited in Best American Essays. Alice writes about life, literature, food, and family in San Diego, California. Read and reach her at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com
October 2025 | Best of Net nominee, nonfiction
Sleeping Arrangements
- On a Bronx fire escape, curled up on couch cushions, desperate for a breeze
- With my sister in a top bunk that belongs to our cousin, in a room that isn’t ours, in a Brooklyn apartment never meant for us
- In a bedroom hardly bigger than the bed, with my mother and my brother and my sister, lying head to foot in a pointless effort to give each other space
- On two lumpy armchairs shoved together as a makeshift berth after the first eviction
- Near the window in an armchair, pen still in hand, scribbling my stories before morning traffic wakes the others
- At a desk in class, chin propped on palm, until an ill-shaven Jesuit pauses his lecture on Aeschylus to poke me with his cane
- On a carpeted floor that smells of beer and party smoke, too drunk to drive home, too scared to face my mom
- In too many beds with too many strangers hoping I’ll wake early and be gone
- Beneath the sound of a seagull’s song in the hot, salty air, on a blanket not far from the water’s edge
- In a rocker near the window, where a streetlamp keeps watch nonchalantly while I nurse a baby too curious to sleep
- Night after night under a Ninja Turtles comforter with a child in my arms till his fever breaks or the bogyman concedes defeat
- On a train that left for the city before dawn, crowded with thick coats, aging briefcases, and rigid to-do lists
- With two restless Little Leaguers, all elbows and knees, who’ve stayed up too late, wired on candy they’ve looted in Frankenstein’s name
- In our cabin’s top bunk, with bugs rude and riotous outside and my knees scraping the ceiling’s wooden planks
- At the dining room table at two in the morning, face down on a yellow legal pad crammed with fits and starts of dialogue and margin notes
- In costly New York hotel rooms paid for by clients who expect me at their conference tables at eight a.m. sharp, no matter how many first days of school I have to miss
- In a flimsy tent with my eight-year-old, both frightened by the pounding rain and relentless darkness
- In a window seat, engines growling, legs cramped, hours to go
- On a recliner, clutching a Teddy bear, waiting again for a teenager to arrive home safely
- On someone else’s sheets, with someone else’s husband
- At a New England B&B, the smell of bacon drifting in, the day ours alone
- On my meditation cushion, with the best of intentions
- Folded into the arms of someone who loves me, at last
- Sitting at my desk in Midtown, chair turned toward the windows of the fortieth floor across the way, framing suits that move with mysterious purpose and talk that makes no sound
- On the shoulder of a Mets fan, somewhere in the sixth inning
- In a Broadway theatre, on a New York weeknight in a seat we paid too much for
- Fitfully, in a chair at the bedside of my son drying out in an emergency ward
- Swaying in a hammock under a June night’s sky, believing the worst is over
- In a queen-sized bed, in a master bedroom, alone
- Soundly on a loveseat in my study, a first draft finally done
- Tossing and turning in a room beneath a room where a young man lies homeless again, no match for his demons, fearing I will trade my life for his
- With the touch of a grandchild’s breath on my cheek, his weight on my heart, sensing but not seeing that there’s only this moment
Mary Ann McGuigan
Mary Ann McGuigan’s creative nonfiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Brevity, Citron Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. The Sun, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and many other journals have published her fiction. Her collection Pieces includes stories named for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net; her new story collection, That Very Place, was released in September 2025. The Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library rank Mary Ann’s novels as best books for teens; Where You Belong was a finalist for the National Book Award. She loves visitors: www.maryannmcguigan.com.
October 2025 | nonfiction
Between Starbucks and Malibu Yogurt
Eight of us sit in Sunset Plaza, sipping our lackluster decaf Americanos a little too slowly, savoring our last few moments outside The Center. The non-caffeinated version doesn’t taste the same as the real stuff, but caffeine is barred in treatment. Too many of us abused it as an appetite suppressant.
I catch Maritza eyeing the frozen yogurt shop longingly—another anorexic food group. In treatment, it’s either real ice cream or gelato, no low-fat, low-calorie substitutions. If you’re not getting your period, it’s full-fat ice cream for you. She sucks down the rest of her iced coffee. Black with two Splenda. No milk, never milk.
A man so tan I can make out white lines around his wrists where woven bracelets must have once been walks his golden retriever around the parking lot. The man is beautiful, and so is the dog. The dog’s coat looks show-ready, spun gold. I forget myself, where I am, and who I’m with, so I admire them, wondering what kind of life these two live and what kind of home they’ll return to.
Then, I hear Maritza whisper, Dog. Dog. Where’s Chloe? The word “dog” spreads around our circle, a panicked, high-stakes game of telephone. Get the message to the CNA before Chloe sees the dog. If we can warn the CNA, she can remove Chloe from the vicinity, we can avoid Chloe’s biggest trigger. We’re too late, though. Chloe sees the dog and thinks of her father’s hands. She puts her head between her knees and starts rocking back and forth, moaning long and low.
Two girls, late teens, walk out of Malibu Yogurt. They use their tongues to pick gummy worms, pieces of Oreo, and Heath Bar off the top of their curated dessert peaks. The girls see Chloe rocking back and forth, back and forth, and avert their eyes. I stare at them. I will them to look at me, I will them to look back at Chloe, I will them to walk away.
They quicken their pace when they reach the parking lot, giggling behind their palms. Once in the car, the driver rolls down all the windows, and the passenger takes her hair down. I watch them peel onto the 101 heading south. The passenger lets her hand dangle out the window, and I keep my eyes on their car until I can’t anymore, and I have no choice but to turn back.
Miranda Morgan
Miranda Morgan is a writer who proudly hails from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has worked as a writer and producer for various docuseries and unscripted TV projects. Her TV credits include series that have appeared (or will appear) on networks such as History Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery, INSP, PBS, Fox, and others. In 2019, Miranda was awarded a Fulbright Grant to Bergen, Norway, where she taught academic writing workshops and the very first creative writing class at the University of Bergen. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Montana and is at work on her first novel. She is a Visiting Professor of English at Pacific Lutheran University.
