A vital part of Narrative’s mission is to encourage and support young writers and artists. Here are some of the writers under thirty we are proud to have published in the past year.
Natasha Ayaz
Nowhere, Australia
When we emerged, the shore was littered with luminous discs.
Anna Besh
Your Ghost
“Do you have any idea how important you are?”
Anna Buryachenko
My Rickshaw
I dash outside with my tools. Here, my real work begins.
Armen Davoudian
Holy Defense and Other Poems
We were assigned straight to the lion’s muzzle.
J. D. Debris
On Future Rhyming Fuck You with Fuck You Four Times in a Row During “Rent Money”
Any word that keeps repeating & repeating is a prayer.
Bernard Ferguson
It Might Be a Hurricane Year
none of them survived that storm of men that arrived on their shores
Amelia Getahun-Hawkins
Werewolves and Other Intangible Things
She always came back with her lipstick smeared all over her mouth.
Ian T. Hall
Sleep Apnea
The way the sheet pleats below her thighs is somehow French.
Kelsey Hennegen
We Spoke of Death and Other Poems
Terror has a texture like shorn velvet, sensuous and severe.
C. X. Hua
Lilacs
I find in these blurred voices no borders or edges to grace.
Kira Jan
North to Natoma and Other Poems
It’s been months, and the fields are good for nothing but night talks.
Farah Kader
Mama’s House
this house inherited sounds from an imagined place
Samina Kaushek
A Numbers Game
I panic. Pizza. 285 calories per slice. Burgers. Harder to estimate.
A. D. Lauren-Abunassar
Harvest
I see a color that was once unbled and call it you.
Vivian Ludford
Butterfly
When she emerged, she would be wiped clean, even her memory.
John Murray
The Balkans at Rest
Photographs exploring hope in the wake of devastation.
Romeo Oriogun
Under the Mango Tree
The stained-glass windows trapped a saint yearning for light.
Stephanie Pushaw
The Night Before
I was one of the few kids D.A.R.E. had worked on.
James Kelly Quigley
From Notes at the Grave of James Felix Quigley
Hello drug, hello dreg, my innumerable & faceless angels.
Natasha Rao
Old Growth
How to fossilize a feeling, sustain it in amber?
Natalie Rose Richardson
The Animals and Other Poems
My thirteen-year-old bitterness could have shaken him to the ground.
Djenanway Se-Gahon
Jellyfish Movement of Ghosts
A heaving chorus walked me down the aisle of my spine.
Claire Seymour
Long Weekend
I touch the top of his foot with my finger, as lightly as a minnow.
Felicity Sheehy
The First People on Mars and Other Poems
Of course there are writers. And artists. In love with one or the other.
Sophia Veltfort
Generalized Barotrauma on a Fifteenth Birthday
Sara pictures an even Judier Judy out-Judying Judy at school.
Patience Wallace
The Black Hole
I can’t tell him no even if I wanted to.
Sofia Warren
Last Flight from Bordeaux
If I’d known there’d be an epidemic, I wouldn’t have moved to France.
Caylee Weintraub
Blight
My dad was optimistic that he could be a one-armed farmer.
Tryphena L. Yeboah
To This God I Will Say
He has his hands on Nii’s throat, and this time I do not stop them.
Evan Yee
An Ethical Dinner Dilemma
“Lobsters aren’t criminals. They didn’t do anything wrong.”