Bear Creek Gazette Prose Competition Winners
First Place
by Fahad Rahmat
Second Place
We Welcome Any and All Religious Signs,
by Kirsten Reneau
Third Place
by Lauren Suchenski
Fourth Place
by Nicks Walker
Fifth Place
Local Residents Dying to Play New
by Matt Hiebert
"After a period of twenty-two years during which time Iorgo did not create art because of his paralyzing fear that ferrets would seek him out and defecate on his paint brushes, Mr. Valva went into a frenzied period of work that lasted until his death at age sixty-eight"
Four Poems
James Knight
Photo - Inge Doumoulin
"I can see how you might be disappointed in me, how you might get outraged and come to my house with your pitchforks and tiki torches and wake me up in the middle of the night to murder me where I stand"
The Grizzly Sunday Strip #3
"If it weren’t for the surprise of his behavior I might have really leaned into this simulation idea like I was fucking crazy. But dad, well I come close to saying he was a husk, but it was different than that, almost as if he had always had one but was shed of it and underneath was this raw, vulnerable thing"
Cryptids: Special Feature
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The Art of M.K Wilson
by Sam Pink
This one starts with a fuck no
to most everything
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by Rosie Garland
You should see a doctor,’ says your sister. ‘Things shouldn’t come out of your bellybutton.
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A Sneak Peak at Gertrude's Gorgeous Garden
by Steve Neal
Once we exited the greenhouse, Gertrude beamed as she talked about the grand finale awaiting us
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Bear Creek Newcomers Telephone Directory
by Isla O'Neill
Please call Bear Creek Elementary for the janitorial position. They promised it to you long ago
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by Michael James
I’ve been with my husband for 25 years, and lately he’s seemed distant. Distracted. Can you suggest anything to bring the banana, so to speak, back into our relationship?
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by Alex Woodroe
She liked to call it Graveyard Strudel, on account of where she’d get the pumpkin, and I’m gonna tell you more about that later
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by Jacob Browne
Many things doest hide within the blind spot. We knowest not. Cannot know. We canst but hope. Or feareth the worst. The worst terrors remaineth darkened
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by James C. Holland
Hello, my green-fingered friends! Spring is here! The bees are abuzzing and the worms have returned to their holes
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by Noa Covo
I did not know what I felt for the wasp girl at first. Finding yourself is difficult in this town
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by Zora Graves
I’ve heard it said that “decay is a slow process in a Bear Creek winter.” I don’t think this is truer anywhere than the cannery
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by Aj Maiorana
"This can’t last forever,” he said, “when it all goes back to normal, I don’t wanna worry about the little things I did
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by Tiffany Belieu
My entrance tonight is heralded by a few chimed bars of The Monster Mash. A little something for the human clientele looking for some entertainment with their shopping.
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by Tyler Dempsey
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This box was different, than how it, on the outside, looked, as Mama reached her hand inside. In fact—what Mama pulled up, was bigger, than what, on the outside, this box was.
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by Clio Velentza
They crawl under the bed: one face, one pair of bodies, one bottle of plum brandy
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by Charles Hermesmann
As much as she hated having a son, and as much as she refused to believe in the existence of God, Martha began to pray on her knees every night—not for Thomas, but to Thomas: the Boy Master of Death
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Review of Mark Wilson's Powerpoint Eulogy
by Gabriel Hart
I couldn’t help it — I started crying right there in the library. Not that I really cared about this fictional character — it was almost as if I felt trapped in my own country, shackled to the American death march
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by Coleman Bomar
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