When you said, “I value your effort, not the result,” I believed you loved me; when you said, “Four students got full marks, why didn’t you?” I believed you tried to motivate me; when you said, “You are too stupid even to understand the simplest function,” I believed you were disappointed and didn’t see my pain; when I said, “I don’t want to study. I just want to lie in bed,” you said you wished the boy next door who aced all the subjects were your child, and Mum, how could I believe you loved me and not my grade?

From Guest Contributor Huina Zheng

Huina either coaches her students to write at work or write stories for fun after work.

It started with gummies. Her mother placed a bag inside her lunch box every day. She gave them all away, hoping the other kids would like her.

She stepped into the bakery, bought lemon cake, and ate it.

From Guest Contributor Faye Rapoport DesPres

Faye is the author of the memoir-in-essays Message From a Blue Jay and the Stray Cat Stories children’s book series. She lives and writes in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The beggar standing on the corner was holding up a cardboard sign I drove past too fast to read. I heard a red alarm bell ringing when one of my students, a college junior, spelled “toxin” “tocsin” in an essay. In the surviving fragment of his book, On Analogy, Julius Caesar tells us to “Avoid strange and unfamiliar words as a sailor avoids rocks at sea,” which, I admit, seems like sensible advice. But even so, I’m not about to take writing tips from the man who started the fire that in 48 B.C. destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

Sure, many of the English majors at Wilson-Reed College had read works by George Orwell, Octavia Butler, and Margaret Atwood before, but they had never read them assembled together in one course, until they took Dr. Regina Cabello’s Survey of Protest Literature.

By that time, though, her many students had learned, firsthand, the lessons of it all and were already preparing themselves to join the fight.

From Guest Contributor Ran Walker

Ran is the author of 20 books. He teaches creative writing at Hampton University in Virginia. He can be reached via his website, www.ranwalker.com.

I stir the White Russian, the clink of ice so soft, tender. I should be grading papers and concentrating on how to explain Rasputin and Nicholas II to my students. I just want to abide in White Russians and ice, a creamy sea.

I’m losing.

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His story, “Soon,” was nominated for a Pushcart. Yash’s stories are forthcoming or have been published in Café Lit, Mad Swirl, 50 Word Stories, and Ariel Chart, among others.

In the past, they described Michael as an “introvert” and “sensitive.” They said he was “different, but he’s harmless.” “He’s a good kid, just a little shy.”

The headline read: Michael Stocktan, age 19, entered Morris High School with his dad’s handgun and shot 19 students and a teacher. Three are critically wounded.

From Guest Contributor David W. Cofer

Ken determined that martial arts would be his way of life and so set about training with both sword and spear. His intention was to practice until he was ready for mortal combat, and then square off against consecutively more difficult challengers. In this way, he would rise to become the greatest master of sword fighting.

His first would also be his last.

On the working class tube filled with out-of-work laborers, gangs and students, Reyva hugged her backpack on her lap and gazed at the ads above her head. 

“Change your Life! Travel with Distant Horizons!” 

She ditched her unfinished schoolwork and went. 

At Distant Horizons, she lied about her age. She wasn’t afraid to make adult choices.

They strapped her to a table. Fear gripped her, but they stripped it away. Gave her a new body, a new purpose.

Within the storms of Thacyline, she rode the winds on golden wings and avoided looking towards Earth. 

She could never go back.

From Guest Contributor Tyrean Martinson

Allison refused to budge. By all rights, she was entitled to stay in this booth as long as she liked. She’d bought a latte after all, never mind that had been well over three hours ago.

Oh, how she hated them.

Mrs. Hoover knelt in front of me, a gesture reserved for the quietest of her preschool students.

“It doesn’t matter what I want to be, only what I am becoming,” I recited, the scales on my ankle yearning to be scratched.

From Guest Contributor Sarah Vernetti