Qualified Entry, Second pixelhose Writing Competition. Nonfiction Category.

By Ute Carson

There had not been such a brilliant autumn in recent memory. Even though it was already September, a month which usually brought dense fog and rain to the port city of Hamburg, this year the temperature was deceptively mild and dry. Margret and I had the door to our balcony wide open. The row houses where we shared a flat were shoulder-touchingly close and noises from neighboring balconies drifted in. It was the beginning of the fall semester, our second year at the university. We were architecture students, a field that promised plenty of opportunities in the early sixties^.  We lay stretched out on the floor on our stomachs, drawing. Continue Reading

Qualified Entry, Second pixelhose Writing Competition. Nonfiction Category.

By Carmen Pe’gues Early

Sometimes our best friends are friends we never knew we had.

Almost two summers ago, my husband and I, were told we were expecting twins. A former doctor had warned us a few years earlier that I should look into getting a hysterectomy, after a near death experience that caused me to have a stroke at the age of 34. It was way too risky to have any more children after my son was born. Becoming pregnant again could cause me to make my husband a widower and leave our four children motherless. Continue Reading

Qualified Entry, Second pixelhose Writing Competition. Nonfiction Category.

By Danielle Villano

Open your testing booklets.  My heart pounded at the prospect of a new picture prompt. Excitement tingled through me, down to the soles of my cheap white tennis shoes.

Look at the photograph below.  The booklets had a black and white photo printed on one page; we were instructed to think about the image presented to us and write a story based on what we saw and imagined.  An image of a boy sitting in a tree, to my classmates, invoked the very boring “one day there was a boy sitting in a tree…” Continue Reading

Qualified Entry, Second pixelhose Writing Competition. Nonfiction Category.

By L.C. Nate

A little while ago, I asked a student this question. “If we added one more hour in a day, will there be enough time to do everything we needed to do?” She said no. How many times have I heard people say, “If I had only one more hour, I could have finished the job.” Continue Reading