I found Artisanal Article Machine the way I find most publications: someone I like published a story in it. The name immediately pulled me in. It rolls off your tongue with the initial alliteration. …

Despite the propaganda of Hallmark cards and wanna-be grandparents, parenting comes with some pretty big downsides.

“Listen,” says your friend. “The sleepless nights and dirty diapers were all worth it when Kylie first said, ‘I lub you, mama.’” She is on a seemingly endless crusade to persuade everyone in your…

SCIENCE FICTION

Megan turned over a Jack. “Top that,” she gloated at her big brother, confident the odds were with her for once.

“Okay,” said Tim laying down a Queen and flashing his annoying grin before sweeping up the two cards and adding them to the bottom of his deck.

Megan sighed…

I was surprised to find three pairs of my spouse's undies packed in our overnight bag. What was the man planning to do during a quick trip to visit a historic university town?

I was willing to grant the wisdom of packing a choice of long-sleeved and short-sleeved shirt options…

TALES FROM THE VILLAGE SHOP

Volunteering in my local village shop gives me a chance to interact with my neighbors. There are the children who wander in to buy sweets, the walkers who stop mid-hike for a coffee, and the regulars who come by every morning to pick up their newspaper.

For some of the…

“Be kind”, “Be Polite”, “Be Nice” and “Don’t judge” are dangerous orders to give to a child, and a form of grooming for adults. — Alison Tennent

As a new parent, you look down at your sleeping child and vow to do everything in your power to protect them from…

I adore collecting perfect snippets of prose: the ideal first line, the finely crafted sentence, the deliciously satisfying final mic drop. I geek out when I find words crafted together which fit their story perfectly and are also beautiful on their own.

Read this from Jessie Waddell:

I’m not built…

Capturing a spy always makes a good newspaper copy. Confederate soldiers had captured Civil War doctors and possible spy Mary Edwards Walker. The Richmond Sentinal, a daily paper in the Confederate capital, was there with the story.

The female Yankee surgeon captured by our pickets a short time since, in…