This week, we bring you an all-fiction issue of Cutleaf in honor of National Short Story Month.
In her first published story, Charlotte LeBarron explores the transformative power of art, childhood friendships, and the fraught dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship in “The Beige House.”
Inspired by Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, C.R. Resetarits takes us on a lush and wild ride, and shows us a compelling and sometimes humorous glimpse into complicated love and relational dynamics in “The Deep Tangle.”
And in the aptly titled “Deluxe Scrabble,” a collaborative story between Kim Magowan and Michelle Ross, readers are introduced to a mother playing Deluxe Scrabble against herself on Mother’s Day. The game spurs a host of complex memories that allow the narrator to explore her childhood relationships. At the end of the story, we share an interview with Magowan and Ross by Cutleaf editor Keith Lesmeister about writing in collaboration.
This issue features edited illustrations from Peter Newell’s “The Rocket Book” (1912), in which a boy named Peter finds a rocket in the basement and sends it up through the building, where it crashes through a family’s dinner table and a writer’s typewriter.