The NightWriter Review: Winter 2024/2025
Featuring “The Mary Taft Mystery” — a new short story by Kevin Carver.
The NightWriter Review is the literary journal of San Luis Obispo NightWriters (“SLO NightWriters”), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a mission of nurturing the Central Coast writing community and providing writing education, opportunities, resources, workshops, and scholarships.
The NightWriter Review publishes the first and second-place winners of the annual SLO NightWriters Golden Quill Writing Contest in the categories of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.
100% of the proceeds from the sale of this book go to SLO NightWriters, a support group for writers and poets based in San Luis Obispo, California.
The mission of San Luis Obispo NightWriters is to advance quality writing, promote publication, and expand author recognition in a forum that nurtures a spirit of community for all its members.
Issue #1 contributors:
Editor’s Note by Harvey Ardman
Sounds Like Joni Mitchell by by S.S. Presby
(First Place – Golden Quill Writing Contest 2024)
My Favorite Animal Is a Harbor Seal by Michele L. Roest
(First Place – Golden Quill Writing Contest 2024)
Three Poems by L.I. Henley:
1. Anatomy of a Train (First Place – Golden Quill Writing Contest 2024)
2. Memory of an Unnamed Color
3. An Old Friend Calls to Tell Me About the Death of Another Old Friend
The Lila Segovia Smile by Anne R. Allen
(Second Place – Golden Quill Writing Contest 2024)
My Wrinkled Brain by Rusty Evans
(Second Place – Golden Quill Writing Contest 2024)
Three Poems by Misty Wycoff:
1. Game Time (Second Place – Golden Quill Writing Contest 2024)
2. Exploration
3. A New Tune
The Mary Taft Mystery by Kevin Carver
The Stoic Parent by T.K. Schuberth
Three Poems by Andréa Ferrell Gannon:
1. Abecedarian for an Inheritance
2. As If I Knew What I Was Doing
3. I think to call sometimes to explain
Devil Cut by Robert Morgan Fisher
Ninety Miles from Normalby Christina Dillow
Three Poems by Lewis Leicher:
1. When I Was Five
2. December 1972
3. What I Miss Most
The Light of Luna Madre by C.S. Perryess
Mother-Daughter Luncheon by Debra Davis Hinkle
Three Poems by Nancy Yang:
1. Spring Trip to the Lake
2. Father says to bow our heads
3. Roses and Honeysuckle
An Arranged Marriage by Tom Brauner
Melissa by Heather Campbell
Three Poems by Scott Dalgarno:
1. Down a Hole
2. in the only tall grass left to mow miguel ignacio naps after taking his lunch
3. Letter to Our Adorable Zygote Who Went Unrealized
The Essence by Christine Ahern
(Editor’s Choice)
A Horse Ran Amok by Shari Neva Hollander
Ah, But I Was So Much Older Then; I’m Younger Than That Now by Zaslow Crane
(Editor’s Choice)
Three Poems by Joe Amaral:
1. The Potter
2. Eulogy for Pa Pops
3. The Antiquity of Youth