2016 (Volume 28)

This year we witness not only our contest winners, but many of our other writers dealing with reminiscing and regretting.

In S.J. MacLean's story "Thirty and Out," Ella remembers working with molten steel in a foundry during WWII, but an explosion on a ship in the port forever changes her life. "'Sooner or later the truth will come out, Ella. It always does,' says James."

Laura Apol's poem, "Midwinter, My Mother," is about loss and sadness. The mix of emotions that complicate personal grief come to be experienced against the larger backdrop of nature, "how water and time / grind down the world," and these changing lights and shadows are rendered with emotional restraint, economy of language, precision of imagery, and the pulse, pattern, and resonance of music." 

In "On Kindness," Laura Distelheim recalls the author George Saunders telling the 2013 Syracuse University graduating class that he regrets failures of kindness. "So yes, I'm right there beside George Saunders in counting kindness among my greatest regrets."

The American Transcendalist Henry David Thoreau had his own "take" on regret. "Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh."

As readers, we want you to tend and cherish the works in The Briar Cliff Review and to live afresh as you do so. Enjoy.