Summer 2001
R. Daniel Evans: Mistress of Copper Mountain	"It first happened at the dress rehearsal. She and Nikolai were the only ones who could have noticed. When she slithered around his body in the Act Two pas de deux, Olga's toenails grew twice as long as her toes, expanding into hard, curved scythes. They cut through her soft leather toe shoes as she grasped Nikolai's left hand. He winced as the claws cut him, but he kept his stage smile rigid as a mask on his face.""
Les Smith: Melon Rita	"The man's name is Warren and he is explaining as well as he is able to the woman, Nancy, how he sculpted a piece in a small town in northern Italy under the tutelage of a world-class sculptor. Nancy appears to pay rapt attention to Warren. He is convalescing from an operation which removed a brain tumor. It is difficult for him to speak and his thoughts are jumbled but he proceeds doggedly."
Charles Edward Brooks: A Book You'll Want to Read	We find ourselves in North Carolina during the Second World War. A plain middle-aged spinster copes with a job in retail and, with responsibility for an old and crotchety father. Not only that: On her day off, she acts as librarian at her church. One day a mysterious book arrives in the library's mail, quite unlike the other volumes on the shelves, and changes her life forever.
Bill Embly: A Gibbous Moon	Paul, a middle-aged man, and Serena, a young woman just out of college, fall in love against the backdrop of a distant war and local violence. Serena experiences morning sickness. Is she ready to have a baby? Is it too late for Paul? Do they want to bring a child into this world, or is that precisely what they should do?
Denise Seibert: Ghost's Story	"The wind sliced through her like angry hands, tearing at her clothes and pawing at her bones, but she did not feel the cold. Her eyes scanned the piles of seaweed and driftwood left by the receding tide, looking for a child-sized lump, the seaweed that caressed a cold cheek and wound around about a neck, a foot, an arm. But the sea seemed determined not to release its dead and without proof there was always hope."
Nancy Purcell : Sisters	Three elderly sisters celebrate twenty years of life together in an out-of-the-way country town. The glue of their lives has been a close knit family, truth, trust, and a dark secret. An anniversary of their move to the remote area provides the impetus for startling revelations. The question becomes do they really know each other?
Tara Masih: Little Fictions	Snapshots of the little fictions we live by and their consequences, which can range from mild to fatal. The narrator's tentative foray into dating someone who exists in two worlds-reality and fantasy-and who questions gender barriers is a catalyst that allows the narrator to face her own reality.
Lester Mark Lenoff: And Ways Without Reproach	"Admission Assessment - Patient: Paul Lester Cate, Sex: Male, Presenting Problem: (or record first comments on admission) 'I don't know. Maybe I did it.' Patient then became selectively mute, producing only loose associations and offering no history."
Rachel N. Bentley: First Day of School	"Although I appear to be a warm and open-hearted mother, Davey and I know the force of the demands I make on him. He does his best to please me, and while I am pleased when he does what I ask him to do, sometimes he frightens me. When he feels like resisting, he'll simply sit alone for hours, twirling an object between his fingers"
Diane Hoover Bechtler: Used Car Lot	"Now I was getting irritated at this horse's ass. He couldn't take his eyes off her. A hot wind blew across the acreage of blacktop, peopled with a community of glaring cars, and I knew with all my soul that this man still loved my wife, a woman he hadn't seen in twenty years. I wanted to punch him right in his fat gut."