The latest…
The Softness I Owe by Joemario Umana
Where they taught me to shut the door, flowers pressed through the hinges, bloomed and held it wide open. Look, I know how to hold a butterfly and not tear its wings. I know how to water a flower without drowning it. I know how to cradle ache and not mistake it for the end. Once, I almost lost it, my hands curled into the shape of a tangerine, to summon red out of a man who called me fruity and laughed. But softness arrived…
Keep reading
The Good Life Review Buzz is our hotspot for exciting news, interviews, book reviews, AND… Micro Monday where we feature brief fiction, cnf, and poetry. It’s like a shot of literary adrenaline to jump start your week!
Buzzworthy…
Author Q&A with Matt Mason
I hope what they take is just a minute in someone else’s perspective. That’s what poetry is about for me and that’s why I really believe if there was more poetry in our daily lives we’d have a more connecting us to one another. I read poetry not just for enjoyment but to also get to take a few steps in another’s shoes and see a world that’s different from the one my own experiences bring me.
Keep readingOther Micro Monday features, news, book reviews, and interviews with our contributors…
Fashionably Late, but Coming In Red Hot
We missed Valentine’s Day and all those feels. But being fashionably late is cool. All the hopeless romantics know that hearing “I love you” when it’s *almost* too late is so satisfying. (As evidenced by the frequent use in rom-coms in Hollywood.)
In all fairness, in our December newsletter, we also said we were gearing up to hibernate for the winter. Still, where do all the weeks go? But enough about romance and the calendar, we’ve got a LOT of exciting updates to share, starting with some BIG NEWS!…
Read
She tells us how we feel and we agree. The therapist we didn’t hire. Her misremembered facts become our story. She trades in gossip: who has an addiction, a love affair. No lovers allowed. She’ll be our only love. She leans…
Read
Author Q&A with Frank Gaughan
We understand through story. In good stories, we also empathize. If I can create a story where there was nothing before and also have that story that help someone understand and empathize, I’ve done my job….
Read
Valentine’s Night in County Clare by Dan Thompson
“the crashing Atlantic forever tackling the rocks below the village – it wasn’t the cold that froze me there or anything else that might have prepared me for what I saw when I looked up…
Read
Author Q&A with Jake Bienvenue
Nothing I’ve published is even remotely like this. It’s mostly been straightforward realism. But I think with “Palimpsest” I got more comfortable with weirdness, with just saying shit I think is striking or funny, and not worrying about how it’s going to cohere. It’s a trust thing, I think…
Read
House Party by Dory Rousos Moore
When her new boyfriend’s black Grand Am swerves into our complex, she jumps up, her drink spilling over the edge. The way she falls in love is with a whoosh, like she’s being sucked into a vacuum, and the way I fall in love is by pretending not to…
Read
Sub Window for Issue #23 Closes Soon
We are currently reading work for Issue #23. We publish poetry, short fiction and cnf (up to 5000 words), and flash fiction and cnf (up to 1000 words). We nominate for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Best Small Fictions, Best Micro Fictions, and Pen Short Story Award, AND… YES we are a paying market! ($60 per piece published in the seasonal issue).
Guidelines are available on our submission page, and the form to submit is on Submittable…
Read
The Taste of Absence by Bethany Bruno
My father drank black Maxwell House from a repurposed Big Gulp cup, the kind with a faded NASCAR logo and a plastic straw he never used. Every morning, long before the world stirred, he filled it to the brim and cradled it between his knees as he drove to work. No cream. No sugar. Just heat, grit, and something close to devotion…
Read
Introducing Issue #22 ~ Winter 2026
We’re excited to announce the release of Issue #22 ~Winter 2026. This issue is a “Best Of” Edition that features some of our prize-worthy pieces from the past two years, plus bonus new work from Matt Mason (Nebraska State Poet 2019-2024), Jake Bienvenue, Frank Gaughan, and the Nebraska Writers Collective 2025 Kate Sommer Memorial Poetry Prize winner, Rebecca Oliver! We’re honored to share and celebrate this bountiful collection of amazing work!!…
Read
Jiya Kotecha Reviews Prachi Gupta’s “They Called Us Exceptional”
Written by Prachi Gupta, this memoir unravels the psychological cost of Asian Americans attempting to attain the ‘American Dream’. The novel explores the familial dynamics between Prachi, her parents, and her brother Yush, whose intertwined struggles trace a journey through unseen wounds of cultural pressure. Through honesty and heartbreak, Prachi exposes how the pursuit of exceptionalism can both bind and break a family…
Read
Chia Shower Pet by Crockett Doob
and what else besides chop sticks could get in the hole but then I thought, the shower head (the water gun setting) and I tried it and it worked, nailing the middle of the funnel, blasting the seeds out and I made my chia drink, finally, with herbal tea, and it looked beautiful and red and I made a video for Cora and so all was well; but then…
Read
Author Q&A with Sarah Schiff
We all know that fiction lies its way to the truth, so I want to promote truth in a world riddled with lies, and I want to add just a little bit of beauty to a world that, at times, can be heartbreakingly ugly…
ReadSomething went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Subscribe to get The Buzz delivered directly to your inbox…