The pieces in this collection explore deeply intimate themes such as mental health struggles, suicide, depression, trauma, motherhood, identity, and resilience, blending memoir with cultural commentary. Across its varied voices, the collection emphasizes vulnerability and survival, offering raw reflections on pain, memory, and the pursuit of meaning in circumstances ranging from the everyday to the extraordinary. For those seeking personal narratives that challenge, heal, and inspire, the words fashioned here will leave a lasting impact. Contributors: Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Athena Dixon, Cris Mazza and more.
Ken R. Harmon is a queer writer who lives in Charlotte. He completed an M.A. in English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and completed doctoral coursework and research in Literature and Literary Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He taught college writing and literature for 23 years. He is editor and founder of West Trade Review and founder, director, and publisher of Iron Oak Editions. His work has recently appeared in Humana Obscura and Montana Mouthful, and he edited the anthology Ecobloomspaces: Poetry at the Intersection of Nature, Environment, and Place.
D. W. White is the Founding Editor of L'Esprit Literary Review, Prose Editor of West Trade Review, and Publisher of Indirect Books. A Ph.D. candidate in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois-Chicago, his criticism and prose appear in 3:AM, The Florida Review, New Critique, Necessary Fiction, and Chicago Review of Books, among others. He teaches fiction workshops at UIC and a graduate seminar on Rachel Cusk in the MFA Program at Roosevelt University. His full-length study of narratiion in the novels of Cusk, The Revolution Comes From Within, will be published next year by Indirect Books.