Virginia Writers Project
Prose
Contributor selections from Summer 2024
C. V. Alba | John Nicolay
Of Mice and Men: A Comedic Tale of Rodents and Humans Setting: Two 15-year-old boys, Ben and Jake. They are classmates at Lawrence Washington High School in the Virginia piedmont. It is a time with no Internet, no Google, no AI bots writing papers. This tells us, the boys could only blame themselves for poor writing, factual lapses, and extraordinary distractions, namely girls and baseball, especially girls who played baseball...
Deborah M. Prum
Help Every morning, she shapes the word "HELP" in the steam on her glass shower door. She leaves it there for no one to see. She understands the grim futility of her gesture. Regardless, she admires her tenacity, her daily attempt to call for the calvary to show up, but not the actual calvary. Not real people. She desires celestial involvement, an ethereal, not corporeal intervention, some cosmic shift that would render life bearable again. She doesn't cry right after it happens. Not when the cop arrives at her front door. Not when half the town, including his former co-workers and her current colleagues, shows up at the wake. Not as they lower his steel casket into the gaping red earth on that brutally sunny day. He had worked over the mountain, an hour away. On his way home, he'd call and leave a message. Since the day of his death, each night before trying to sleep, she listens to voicemails from the days before he died, the ones she hadn't yet erased . . .
Deidra Whitt Lovegren
Far Away and Fast There were too many of us, Lizzy thought, tucking herself behind a door jamb. Her father smoked in stony silence in front of a television, while her mother swatted her three brothers who snatched fingerfuls of mashed potatoes from a large bowl on the dining room table.
Deidra Whitt Lovegren
Human Curiosities "Tell me about Grandfather," I suggest, clipping a lavalier mic onto Éva's red floral blouse. It matches her hair, her lipstick, and her high heels prominently placed on the wheelchair's footrest.
Joy Merritt Krystosek
Ira J. Barron, Tomato Farmer Ira J. Barron died on May 8, 1980. Grandpa was seventy-five when he died, but he sure looked like a hundred.
Hugh Nicolay
Gone Fish'n In the opening scene of The Andy Griffith Show, father Andy and son Opie Griffith are seen walking down a path, fishing poles in hand, whistling cheerfully.
J. Thomas Brown
Quantum Angel There's a bowing of the trusses overhead as a car slows to a stop. I get off my perch on the strut beneath and peer up between the railings.
J. Thomas Brown
Paphiopedilum "Don't print," said the car salesman. "Just squeeze it in right there. Your full signature." Mitchell wrote in a scratchy hand: Mitchell A. Tubbs. It was more than he wanted to spend.
Rudolf Keith Dunn
Straight With No Chaser My youth slipped away so easily, so much time wasted on alcohol, unlucky cards, and women. Years faded away,
Rudolf Keith Dunn
Toy Soldier The boy stared at the frightened woman. His face was a dark mask of indifference when he pulled the trigger of his automatic rifle, unleashing a barrage of bullets into her astonished body.
Steph Seton
Blue Ridge Kinships A few years ago, I visited Lovingston where my second cousin once removed, Bert Seton lives. Bert, an only child, is a gifted raconteur.
Alex Michael
Shades of Gray I hear the faint crying of an older woman in the room next to mine. The sound carries through the plaster gray walls—a stark contrast to the oppressive silence that otherwise engulfs this place.
Special selections from our members
Gwendolyn Poole
Lincoln's Promise
Lincoln promulgates the Emancipation. It is Christmas Eve. Annual moments of subdued celebration. One young slave decides to take on the next adventure, his freedom.
Morgan Phenix
The Death of Memoir
The author reminisces on the death of a beloved neighbor and friend in the small town of Stanley, Page County.
Steph Seton
Living Lovingston
It is 1960 in the Nelson County courthouse town of Lovingston. Two high school friends spend a leisurely afternoon until they are drawn into the dark side of life and racial attitudes. In this young adult tale, the author takes the reader from romance to encounter.
Virginia Writers Project Spring 2024
Prose fiction:
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Deidra Whitt Lovegren, POUR L'AMOUR DU CHOCOLAT, SAM & SARA'S SAMSARA
C. V. Alba & J. Nicolay, MATILDA
Steph Seton, THE SCULPTOR AND HER MODEL
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Virginia Writers Project Winter 2023
Prose personal essay, Caroline High School:
Carter Leigh, OTHER
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