Annie’s novel “Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown” won the Screencraft Cinematic Book Contest and will be published in the UK by Inkspot Publishing in the UK in 2023. http://inkspotpublishing.com/titles/paradise-undone/ Her fifth book, ‘Put Off My Sackcloth’, was published in 2021, it was a runner up in the Los Angeles Book Festival 2021 autobiography category. Her short story, ‘Kenny, Winking’, won the ChipLitFest Short Story Contest (UK) 2022. Her poetry chapbook ‘Anotomie of the World’ was published in 2017.
My mom knows nothing about basketball. She never even went to any sports games until I was a kid and made her come to soccer – my first team sport, though I don’t do it anymore. I decided I should get really really good at one thing, not be half-assed at two, so I quit…
On Crete, butcher stalls bled into gutters; rabbit carcasses grinned from hollow faces. I wondered how they skin such delicate ears and just who buys those rabbits; I never saw anyone carry one home. There was lamb too, and occasional chicken, but rabbits filled most of the stalls, multiplying cadavers like babies. I couldn’t see…
“Did Maria prepare the back bedrooms just in case?” Beth quickly scans the two small rooms. “Yes. They’re ready. She does good work.” Checking and re-checking the details, which she had explicitly written out for the housekeeper, paying her dearly to come in during the holidays, she eyes the clock, adds ice to the bucket,…
September in San Francisco made Nora weep with its loveliness. Vertical hills rushed up to meet the eye and cloudless sky, plunged down to the Pacific. Pastel Victorian buildings glistened against the deepening azure. In the blossoming parks, couples drifted behind clusters of rhododendron. Oh, it was worse than spring. The Kodachrome light of sunrise…
Dora’s role is to keep everyone’s spirits up. No one appointed her to the post, yet she instinctively knows how to do it. Stronger, inside, than everyone, and gifted, Dora understands which smile gladdens a certain man, what caress sweetens the day of an older woman. For months, Dora and her husband, Ionatan, their baby,…
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Text & stories © Joanna Sterling
Stories © various authors
Editing by Joanna Sterling & Alyson Faye
Audio by Menna Bonsels
Brooch photography by Mark Colliton
Website by Brighton WEBtech