your wingman with angels

An engineering prodigy arrives in the South, fascinated with an ancient relic and searching for the aerodynamic laws of angel wings, all the while nurturing his grove of Carolina dogwoods. It’s a good life.

Mary Alice Dixon lives and writes in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is a former attorney who often served as court-appointed counsel in juvenile court. She has also been a professor of architectural history, teaching in Charlotte, Minneapolis, and China. She belongs to Charlotte Writers’ Club and Charlotte Lit. Her recent writing is in, or forthcoming from, Living Springs  and Main Street Rag. She volunteers with hospice and delights in reading poetry to the dying, grateful for the lesson this teaches about what really matters.  

—a brush with my bugaboo.

A brother’s seeming “betrayal” awakens a loyal kid sister as his fiercest champion and ally.

Janice Luckey, who lives in Davidson, North Carolina, is a member of the Write On! writing group sponsored by her local library as well as the online writing group Impromptu. Writing became a rhythm of her life when she scribbled a romance novel in a 3-ring binder in junior high school. This sparked a life-long love of all things writerly—writing, reading, journaling and hoarding office supplies. Janice was a contributor to the 2020 and 2021 Personal Story Publishing Projects. You can see more of her stories at LKNConnect.com. When Janice isn’t writing she can be found encouraging her four granddaughters’ creativity or roaming libraries, bookstores, and Staples.

 — You durn fool

Waves of hot lava washed down my throat, past my lungs, and hit my stomach like an acid avalanche.

By day, Nick Sipe works as a mild-mannered IT manager for a Fortune 150 company. By night, he mostly recovers from the workday, but occasionally finds time to write. He enjoys writing Twilight Zone-style short stories, mostly horror and light sci-fi. Nick is currently shopping his debut novel, “Midnight Springs,” to literary agents. “Midnight Springs” is the first in a planned horror-Western series that sends classic monsters (think Frankenstein, Van Helsing, the Wolfman) to the Wild West to tangle with their American counterparts (think witches, the Headless Horseman, the Wendigo). Nick live in Gastonia, North Carolina. He is a member of Charlotte Writers Club.

Each of us would have a dress made specially. My ears perked up.

I imagined, over and over, the blue of my dress, deep and velvety, the color of evening, just as the stars begin to come out.

For fifty years, Becky Gibson has written mostly poetry, publishing it in journals, anthologies, three chapbooks, and five full-length collections. She turned to creative nonfiction only recently, seeking to expand narrative beyond the constraints of a poem. Her essays appear in Snowy Egret, Canary, Cold Mountain Review, and two PSPP anthologies, Twists and Turns and Sooner or Later. Becky taught English at Guilford College until 2008, when she retired to write full-time. She lives with her husband in Chapel Hill.

Fascinated with every big and little thing, Jamie Cheshire has long been an avid student of design and structure. Having worked together with giants, he has had the extreme good fortune to practice his craft for most of the last four decades and has seen his work appear nationally and in several countries on three continents. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with his beloved feral, hippie-chick wife, their three dogs and two cats. Deeply committed to the ordinary, he is constantly searching for a way to describe it.

a foretaste of glory divine yet to come -

Artist, writer, and athlete Bill Gramley of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, recounts his discoveries of Southern cooking and describes the delectables offered up from the table set by his mother-in-law on a 1950s North Carolina farm.

Bill Gramley is a retired Moravian minister. In recent years he has written several Devotional Expressions and Prayers booklets through Centenary United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem. He writes in the Senior Games Literary Arts category each year and stays active competing in track and field, mostly as a shot put, discus, and hammer thrower, winning the Masters national discus championship in 2019 for men aged 80-84. He and his wife, Sandra, live in Lewisville, NC.

‍ ‍

– “Sweetheart, wake up! Santa’s here!”  

“But what I really want, Santa, is a flashlight.”

Annette L. Brown is a personal essayist and creative nonfiction writer who has pieces reflecting her love of nature, family, beauty, and humor in several publications including Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Bad Day Book (Parenting), and several volumes of the Personal Story Publishing Project (Randell Jones). Annette is grateful for the support and friendship of her writing group, the Taste Life Twice Writers. 

“Do you like the gift ya got, girlfriend?”

Wanting to get rid of the proof, I tried to give the chocolates to my family for dessert.

Kym B. Whitecar lives in Indian Trail, North Carolina, where she is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club and Charlotte Lit. When she retired from education, she finally had the time to take a creative writing course, reigniting her passion for storytelling. Currently, she is harassing her friends, family, and critic group with more narrative nonfiction.

I should have developed emotional armor, but I’d gone the other way.

Stunned, I leaned hard on the doorjamb, knuckles white on suitcase handle, nerves frozen as they did when gut feelings proved true.

Eloise Currie lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. She has kept a journal for 30 years and uses it as source material for short stories and nonfiction. Since retiring, she has been a member of a number of writers groups. She has tutored high school and adult students in Language Arts. She has edited two books as well as short stories. She has had pieces published in the Personal Story Publishing Project as well as the Old Mountain Press anthology.

We all know our mothers have magical powers

In Mom’s day, if you were not bleeding and could walk, you were perfectly fine.

Award-winning author Bob Amason is a retired US Air Force Lieutenant colonel who was a college professor for 25 years. A Florida Writers Association member, Bob writes historical and modern suspense novels under his pen name, Frank A. Mason. His Journeyman Chronicles series on the American Revolutionary War won the 2023 Florida Writers Association Gold Royal Palm Literary Award, Florida’s most prestigious writing prize. His latest is The Sunlit Silence series on WWII in the Air. Bob’s writing has been published in six anthologies, prestigious academic journals, and books. He is president of the St Augustine, Florida, Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) and is a National SAR Museum Board member. Dr. Bob Amason lives in Florida with his overachieving wife, a research professor who is the author of a series of children’s books.