I had "sent a message out into the universe" asking for help.

This unexpected path began bearing fruit and I was happy.

Arlene Mandell of Linville, North Carolina, is proudly celebrating her 13th year as a portrait artist at the Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk, NC. A native New Yorker, relocating to the Blue Ridge Mountains with Captain Dan inspired a love of writing. Arlene is a member of “Sue Spirit’s Writing Workshop” and the “Fab Five Writing Gals,” both in Boone, NC; and is a longtime contributor to “Gateways: A Creative Arts Journal,” and to the “Personal Story Publishing Project.” Her many memoirs can be heard on the “6-Minute Stories” podcast.

I did not want to be alone … so I looked for connections beyond the local.

Call it meant-to-be, fate, kismet, benign coincidence, or just plain good luck, I do not care.

Kenneth Chamlee’s work has appeared in eight Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies. His latest collection, The Best Material for the Artist in the World (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), a poetic biography of 19th-century American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt, won the 2024 Outstanding Poetry Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. Ken is the author of If Not These Things (Kelsay Books) and his poems have appeared in The North Carolina Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, Cold Mountain Review, and Kakalak, among others. Ken lives in Mills River, North Carolina. 

“What’s that at the end of the other bed?”

Sometimes we say to our adult selves, “Did this really happen? What did we see?

Annie McLeod Jenkins grew up in South Carolina around folks who were storytellers, so she became one too.  Because she realized that no one else was going to tell her story, and with the opportunity that came with a slower life and a quieter house, she began writing down these personal recollections.  She lives in Winston-Salem, NC, where she is a paying, but relatively inactive, member of Winston-Salem Writers. A few of her stories have appeared in earlier editions of the Personal Story Publishing Project.

A shadowy man with a blurry face motioned for me to come down.

In the dim light, I saw a large room containing mountains of frayed furniture, dishes, rusty hardware, and tattered cardboard boxes overflowing with yellowed papers.

S. G. (Sandy) Benson lives in Warne, North Carolina, where she is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network-West. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, and she received awards from the Nebraska Press Women. She published her first book in 2021, My Mother’s Keeper: One Family’s Journey Through Dementia. Her second book, Dear Folks: Letters Home from World War II, 1943-1946 was released in 2024. She is working on a collection of autobiographic short stories, Girls Can’t Do That. Details at https://www.sandygbenson.com/

“Who told you that?” Mom asked, horrified.

“Nobody goes to the attic!” I asserted. I crossed my four-year-old arms defiantly.

Erika Hoffman of Chatham County, North Carolina, has been writing with the goal of publication for 15 years. She’s been published 460 times in venues such as anthologies, newspapers, magazines, and ezines.  Her niche is the non-fiction narrative although she has written novels. Erika received her degrees from Duke University where she met her husband.  Besides teaching high school, Erika kept busy raising four children.  She belongs to a few writing groups: NCWN, Carteret Writers; and TAF. In addition to collecting bylines, she cherishes her collection of grandchildren: 10!

“I’m coming, Mom. Hang on. I love you IloveyouIloveyou.”

It would match the electric energy inside as we bumbled and fumbled with new information gathering as furiously and ominously as the roiling storm. 

Jo McElroy Senecal has been a member of the Lunas, six actors-turned-writers, for two decades. One of these days she’ll prove it.

In the meantime, a published piece in the NYT, a story in Personal Story Publishing Project collection Foiled, and several essays longlisted and considered in the final round for various publications are cranking things up bit by steady bit. Jo is a member of Sullivan’s Island’s Poe Library Memoir Group.

The music and togetherness created a happy space.

A preaching wrapped into a folk song, circling lessons with rhythm and life.

Ginny likes to connect the dots. As a child, her nose was in books. She followed the stories from beginning to end. She maneuvered pencil across page to convert smatterings of stars into sprawling constellations. She learned that maps, charts and globes are just jumbles of lines and squiggles with stories behind each one, adventures waiting to be shared.

She still likes working on life’s puzzles using stories. Sometimes those story dots connect up to a surprise ending. The adventures keep on happening. She enjoys them from her tiny post office box on Sullivans Island, South Carolina.

My mother disliked going into debt. Self-sufficiency remained her ideal.

He rendered our family homeless and forced my mother to find shelter in abhorrent shacks.

Akira Odani is a Tokyo-born, American-educated bilingual writer of essays, fiction, and non-fiction stories with a focus on cultural, social, and political issues characterizing the two countries. His works have appeared in a Kaidankai (Japanese Ghost Stories) edited and podcasted by Linda Gould, anthologies of the Florida Writers Association Collection, and the Personal Stories Publishing Project produced by Randell Jones. Akira is an aging Asian member of the vigorous writing group, Taste Life Twice Writers.

Anything that can go wrong, it will go wrong.

The police reported it an accident; with anguish I added the word stupid.

Thomas Gery, a common man with uncommon experiences lives in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army with duty in Vietnam. As a social worker he helped children, youth, and adults in a variety of practice venues and situations throughout a work life of 40 years. Married with two adult children and three grandchildren, he is currently writing his life’s story to provide answers to questions his kids will never ask. His first essay appeared in Personal Story Publishing Project—Lost & Found, 2023. 

Something had happened and the farm knew it.

Rooster Cogburn was a burly, jewel-toned arrogance of teals, reds, deeper reds, and blues shot through with lances of yellow and purple.

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.