Drag kings and sea monsters, switchblade travellers and teacup ghosts—these stories and poems are a mixture of the mundane and the bizarre. Here you’ll find true tales of a son’s death and a girl’s first heartbreak, stories that range from the minutely personal to the transcendently universal.

Words are only words until the writer, like an alchemist, blends them with sweat and self-reckoning to create something out of the ordinary. A community of 62 writers combine their words in emerge 17.

emerge 17 includes contributions from TWS students mentored by Kevin Chong(Fiction), Eileen Cook (YA/Speculative Fiction), Claudia Cornwall (Creative Non-Fiction), Hiromi Goto (Speculative Fiction), JJ Lee (Creative Non-Fiction), Fiona Tinwei Lam (Poetry), Jen Sookfong Lee (Fiction), Betsy Warland (Poetry) and program director Wayde Compton.

CONTENTS

Gurjinder Basran — Foreword

Speculative and YA Fiction

T. M. Baldwin — Becoming Crow

Lis Jakobsen — The Golden Scarab of Bloor Street

S. L. Shields — Cedar

Tatiana Lee — Fisherman’s Friend

Thomas Onstott — Banshee’s Tale

Michael Zibauer — The Barmaid’s Adventure

Stephanie Gray — Lockhart and Teague

Robyn Drage — The Gift

Cynthia C. Huijgens — The Novice Collector

Samantha Balliet — Bridge World

Elecia Chrunik — How the Earth Went from Flat to Round

Shilpa Raju — Ties

Leslee Silverman — If It Weren’t For You Kids

Michelle Stack — Circle Time from Hell

Neda Tanha — Mother’s Day

Tanya Boteju — Naya in Costume

Fiction

Neha Puntambekar — Smoke Rings

Adriana Louis — Gilded

Lorna Carley — Love Again

Maureen Butler — The Dance

Kathryn Lee — Interval

Scott Lear — A First Year in High School

Patrick Lucas — Everything You Know Is Wrong

Christy Dunsmore — Rose to the Occasion

Leslie West — The Year of Other Men

Megan Abele — Art and Story

Chelene Knight — Junie

Josh Keefer — The Bus Stop Gentlemen

Sharon Miki — Night Shift

Alyssa Hanada — Matched Socks

Reese Kim Carrozzini — Two excerpts

Urith Hayley — Crocodiles and Crocuses

Gina-Lily D’Attilio — Swagger

Carlie Blume — Where the Lions Are

Poetry and Lyric Prose

Fatima Amarshi — Two poems

Sarah Amormino — Three poems

Leslie Jenneson — Four poems

Kurt Trzcinski — Five love poems

Cara Waterfall — Three poems

Natasha Sanders-Kay — The Pool

Stephen T. Berg — Three poems

Viola Prinz — Four poems

Graham McGarva — The Estrangers—1971

Junie Désil — Broken

Mak Berry — Five poems

Paolo Marcazzan — Two poems

Christine Leviczky Riek — Five poems from The Water Moth

Non-Fiction

Kimberley Phillips Boehm — Leaping into the Warm Air

Daniela Cohen — These Walls

Rebecca Fleck — A Shift in India

Crystal Dalman — Crossroads

Amanda Deitz — His Eyes. Her Eyes.

Jo Dworschak — Mitch and the Kid

Lynn Harrison — Meet the Abrasive Leader

Alissa Messner — The Spinster Cat Lady: An Anthropological Approach

Becky Block — Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Jennifer Heron — Hey, Bug Lady!

Diana Carter — Lights in the Rain

Tara McGuire — It’s Between Him and Me

Stephanie Candiago — Bonded by Smoke

Barry Truter — Underground All the Way

Thi Tran — Of Mom and Men