We’d love to have you enter our current contest. Click on either Current or Latest Contest for submission information. 

The winners of Writer Advice’s Flash Memoir Contest are

Laura Winig, whose piece, “The Changing Room” appears this week.

Eveline Pye, whose piece, “Five Stages of Enlightenment” will appear on April 8.

Karin Cooper, whose piece, “Parent Wrangler” will appear on April 15.

Dorothy R. Collins, whose piece, “A NICU Emergency” will appear on April 22.

J. L. Hagen, whose piece, “Two Truths” will appear on April 29.

And Abigail Taylor, whose piece, “Good Hair” will appear on May 6.

Our congratulations to all winners and finalists. Each will receive their payment on the week their piece is published.

We’re open for submissions and are eager to read your work. To see what we’re looking for, go back to the Home Page and click on Current Contest. Have a question? Use the Contact Box on the Home Page. 

Good Hair

By Abigail Taylor

The strip mall’s salon was empty but for the stylists and a boombox belting out Boys II Men in the back corner. The woman assigned to me, a Jamaican with a captivating smile and nails that were sensational against my scalp, lifted the problematic sections of my hair while I told her what I wanted “not a mullet” and “maybe it can fall into cute bangs if I don’t have time to put product in it?”

I’ve never been glad for my hair thanks to the body dysmorphia I developed after getting ringworm on my scalp at the age of seven. One of the boys in class made it a number one priority to make sure everyone noticed my bald patch. My hair is fine and pale with three different cowlicks in the front, two in the back, and I’m convinced that I’m one breeze away from being Master Splinter’s body double.

We talked for a long time about product because nothing sticks in my hair for more than an hour. Fibers, whips, sprays, collagen. I told her about the perm that burned my tender skin, and a horrible and misguided experiment I had in the twelve grade with Murray’s Pomade. I’d attempted a spikey punk look that didn’t pan out. She started cutting. She was calm and measured and used a little pink bottle of water to spray me with when the hair started to dry.

“I wish I had my grandmother’s hair,” I said after one of those long awkward silences when you don’t know what to say to someone who is toying with your biggest insecurity.

“What’s your grandmother’s like?” she asked, tilting my head this way and that.

“Big. Dark. She always kept it in a beehave. She’d go to the salon once a week for a wash and at night she’d wrap it in toilet paper and a silk bonnet. In the morning she had to pick out all the dents.”

The stylist laughed. “Oh, she had a special pillow, too, I bet.”

“She did!” My phone was already out of my pocket and I shuffled through the folders to find images of Granny and her gravity defying hair. I carried my ancestors in my phone like old people carried their grandchildren in their wallets. I found one with her black hair so tall and rounded that God Themself could feel the tickle of it under Their nose.

“Oh!” the woman exclaimed, looking over my shoulder. “She’s mixed!”

In that instant I felt Granny’s soul rise out of her newly churned grave in a panic. The urge to defend her, to quash the rumor swelled in me. No one ever clocked Granny as fast as this stylist had and it caught me off guard. I opened my mouth but the protest died against my teeth. The pull of Granny’s ghost inside me shouted, No I ain’t!

Why should I lie? I quickly reasoned with myself and the trembling spirit of her. It’s the twenty-first century. I don’t have to pretend for you. You’re dead anyhow.

Hush that talk! She made an angry point of her lips.

True is true.

“She is. Choctaw.” I say with a smile.

“Oh?” said the stylist. “She looks a little black to me. What’s Choctaw?”

“It’s just a tribe.”

“Like Indians?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s cool! There’s still much of America I’m learning about.”

And we talked about this.

And we talked about Jamaica.

Tourism.

White people.

White people hair.

My hair again.

No one appeared with pitchforks to call out Granny’s ghost for spending her life passing and sacrificing her identity because a lie had been the better option for her. The stylist played with my hair a bit longer. She said to me, “You’ve got soft baby hair. You just need to learn how to work with it. Don’t worry so much about how it’s not like whoever else. It’s yours and it’s good hair.”

Granny used to sit me between her knees and braid in twin tails. Her hair, close to God, mine down to the earth, delicate as roots. I realized I didn’t hate my hair, I just wished I had a piece of Granny, of our identity, to have and pass on when it was my turn. When she was old and in hospice, she asked me to brush her hair, sadly flat against the pillow. So, I did.

She hummed, eyes closed, and was happy.

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Abigail F. Taylor is an award-winning Own Voices author from Texas. Her novella, THE NIGHT BEGINS, debuted with Luna Press Publishing February 2023. Her next book, MARYNEAL, 1962, arrives with Wild Ink Publishing in 2025. She lives with a small menagerie and can be found at abigailftaylor.wordpress.com

Two Truths

By J. L. Hagen

Robert Youngren popped through his office door after the school lunch period and eyeballed my buddy Paul and me. He pointed with two outspread fingers and motioned us over.

Mr. Youngren, our principal, stood tall and athletic. His black hair sported a “Kennedy” cut, and he wore dark gray suits over crisp white shirts and shoes spit-shined to an ebony glow. He was an ex-marine, dead serious as a mortician at a funeral viewing.

I glanced at Paul. Alarm flashed across his pale blue eyes. We were obviously in Dutch—but why? He and I were bright students, well-behaved, in a cohort our teachers had labeled, “The Dream Class.” We had done nothing but walk from the cafeteria toward our classroom.

“You two, in my office, now,” he barked. He held the door open, and we shuffled past under his gaze. He motioned to two chairs in front of his desk. “Have a seat.” He sat across from us, leaning forward, his hands clasped and resting on a large calendar pad, the lone item on his oak desktop.

Paul and I shot each other another look.

“I’ve had my eye on you two . . . for some time,” he said. He waited a moment, steely-eyed, letting it soak in. We both shrank back, anxiety etched on our faces.

We were small-town kids just starting eighth grade in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In 1962, the previous year, we had been members of the inaugural class at our new Junior-Senior High School. But no one paid attention to the “termites,” the tag applied by one of our teachers to the youngest students.

“I think you’ve got something on the ball,” he said.

We perked up. What—he wasn’t going to discipline us?

“I want you to do something for me, starting today.”

I opened my mouth to ask the obvious.

“From now on,” he said, “when you hear one of your teachers say something you don’t understand or agree with, I want you to raise your hand and challenge them to explain it.”

Paul gulped. “You’re saying confront them?”

“Don’t be disrespectful. But ask for specifics or a restatement to support their assertions.” He wrote a note and handed it to me. “Here, show this to your instructor.” It was a late slip. “Any questions?”

We shook our heads, no. He stood, walked around the desk, and escorted us out to the corridor.

The entire walk to class, we didn’t speak. In fact, over the next five years until graduation, we never mentioned it again. But that day changed everything.

In some way, Mr. Youngren must have expected this—he had created an academic “terrorist.” Every day in every class, I thrust my hand up to ask a question, add a comment, or make some wisecrack. Without a doubt, it drove my teachers—and other students—crazy. Paul was a bit more reticent; he was a science and math guy. I was verbal.

Imagine my surprise, then, to hear my name called during a 1968 school assembly. As I stood speechless before four hundred students and staff, Mr. Youngren presented me with the Alpha Beta Award. He explained this was the school’s most prestigious recognition of student achievement, selected each year by the faculty.

After graduation, I faced a new challenge at the University of Michigan’s Residential College. Its freewheeling academic culture featured pass-fail classes and written evaluations. It seemed like a perfect milieu.

However, a first-year class in symbolic logic tortured my critical thinking abilities. And my “Freshman Seminar” professor’s evaluation sent me running to the dictionary. She labeled me an “iconoclast.” When I read the definition, Mr. Youngren’s face popped into mind.

After three college degrees and a forty-year obsession with creative problem solving, I finally appreciate my debt to him. He had sparked two truths: question everything you do not understand; and empower others to do the same. Then stand back and let innovation flow. For me, it was key to producing thousands of jobs and millions of investment dollars for communities in four states.

So, what about Paul? He earned a Ph.D. in genetics and a law degree. It propelled a stellar career patenting drugs for a major pharmaceutical company.

Recently, I pondered whether we were the only students Mr. Youngren pulled out of the hallway. Was our experience unique—or did he haul someone into his office every day to convey the same subversive message of empowerment?

Probably not—but I’d like to think so.

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J. L. Hagen is the author ofSea Stacks, a short story collection available on Amazon. His story, “Two Bells,” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A graduate of the University of Michigan and University of Chicago, he and his wife Joy commute between Lake Michigan and Tampa Bay.

A NICU Emergency

By Dorothy R. Collins

The NICU jolts awake—its solemn slumber interrupted by a morning alarm. Somewhere a newborn is coding.

I pull back the blanket shrouding my 3lbs 14 oz son. His miniature ribs jerk, struggling with the in and out grind of unassisted breathing. I’ve been waiting for this moment—the day I could finally hold him without a web of interlocking tubes blocking his delicate features from me. But now, my eyes glued to the monitors instead of him—his respiratory rate dropping once again—I feel selfish taking away his breathing machine. His nurse said it was time. But is he ready? Am I?

A doctor’s rubber clogs pound across the linoleum floor, her coat flapping behind her like a white flag of surrender as she rushes towards the baby in distress. I whip my head around—pain shooting through my C-section incision. My son is not coding. He is fine. But what about his twin brother?

Images of dead babies fill my brain, each one stacking upon the next like a sick game of Tetris, until my temples throb, engorged—just like my breasts—with the anxious thoughts of a mother who relies on machines instead of instincts for the well-being of her babies. Nurses sprint past me, their feet thumping in rhythm to my speeding pulse. My twins’ incubators are on opposite sides of the NICU, and their doctor is rushing towards my other son’s cot.

What should I do? I want to run to my baby. At 2lbs 15 oz, he’s the weaker twin. But I’m holding his brother—a baby struggling to breathe. There are too many wires, too many monitors, too many fears paralyzing me. So, I wait—like I have since I first was admitted—telling myself this is not my emergency. A nurse would get me if my son was dying. Wouldn’t they?

Maybe. That’s the strange thing about Level IV NICUs—emergencies aren’t emergencies here. Doctors discuss permanent heart conditions and lung damage like they’re normal parts of childrearing. Developmental delays are a given. Babies forget to breathe. Their heart rates drop and blood-oxygen levels dip. Yet, nothing is an emergency. It’s all normal preemie stuff—situations that need to be addressed like full-term babies need to be burped.

Their monitors’ alarms are the only thing reminding us what’s happening to these babies—these parents—is not normal. But there are so many alarms sounding, I can never be sure if we’re in a permanent state of crisis or no crisis at all.  

I steady my breath, knowing I need to remain calm. Touching my son’s sunken cheeks, I watch him flinch. His papery arms sprawl out in shock, before curling back inside my arms. His parched lips—too feeble to suckle milk— snuggle against the warmth of my bare chest, the tape covering his pointed chin wrinkling as his feeding tube brushes against me. Our skin, pressed together, acts like medication—my measured breaths seeping into his lungs, his still demeanor calming me. And slowly, his breathing and mine return to normal.

Squinting through scratched glasses, I try to make out where the doctors and nurses landed. Are they hovering over my other son’s cot?

No. It’s another baby’s station. This isn’t my emergency. It’s someone else’s.

My son is fine or at least as fine as a baby unable to breathe, eat, or warm themselves without assistance can be. But my leg is still bouncing—tiny ripples of panic spreading through my son’s tiny limbs. Why have my nerves not settled?

I look at the 23-week-old micro preemie sleeping next to my son’s cot—her body the size of an extra-large action figure. Preemies aren’t tougher than they appear. They can break. This isn’t the end of an emergency—it’s one hurdle in a never-ending crisis.

Eventually, my son’s nurse comes back. She reaffixes tubes to the safety pins and rubber bands lining his newborn hat, repositioning rolled-up blankets in his incubator before lying him on his stomach. In two short minutes, everything I’ve learned about baby safety has been undone. But I don’t question her. These are special circumstances—the NICU is for sick babies. And with sicknesses, nurses know best—not moms.

I wheel towards my other son, touching the downy hair lining his back. His monitor beeps in alarm, my son grunting. Is this the beginning of an emergency or another ordinary NICU event? I pull back my hand. Maybe there’s no difference between the two.

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Dorothy R. Collin is a writer, speech-language pathologist, and former opera singer who enjoys connecting with others through her writing. Her work has been featured in WOW! Women on Writing and . She lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut with her four young children and husband.

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Parent Wrangler

By Karin Cooper

It’s that dreaded call, once again, from the daycare center. Birdie’s misbehaved. Today, she told Raul his command of the English language was incomprehensible, unacceptable in the land of the free and the brave and needed improvement.

Rather, Birdie bellowed, “If you’re going to live in this country why can’t you learn to speak English. No one can understand you.”

“There’s a lack of self-control,” Suzy, the director, tells me. 

“She’s not becoming a participating or a cooperating member of the community.” I listen, though I’m not roused. Today’s naughtiness was preceded by her unwillingness to join in group exercises. She hates exercising. It’s the one activity I asked the director to make sure she did daily, which caught humble Raul in the fray.

“Exercise, go you.” Raul gently attempted to lead her into the room with the rest of the group.

Birdie likes reading. Or rather, she likes holding a book, looking like she’s reading as a shield against the daycare community. Raoul removed the book. “We go, exercise, go you.”

The excessive pronouns triggered the rage. I know her.

The Deerfield Adult Day Care director, Suzy, said it’s not easy getting good workers. In other words, they have a waiting list of people, and a problematic “community member” is easily replaced.

It’s the second call in a week.

Yesterday, she wouldn’t eat the first lunch choice offered. “Too peppery,” she complained. The cook reassured her there wasn’t a speck of pepper in the mashed potato or the white fish. Bland is the kitchen’s specialty. By state law, a second choice is offered. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich appeared. One bite, and she started sneezing uncontrollably with her mouth open. I know this projectile sneezing all too well.

I’m sure I put down on the health form, under allergies, peanuts.

I doodle algebraic equations while listening to the list of infractions. Trying for a perfect equation for a perfect balance. Algebra is easier than life. What will satisfy the M equation?

This isn’t the first daycare center I’ve enrolled her in. Birdie’s complaints seemed legitimate. When complaints railed about uncomfortable chairs, I found a center with better chairs. When the next center’s bathrooms were reported as filthy, I found a center that guaranteed full-time maintenance. When the next center’s van had too many “starts and stops,” which accounted for daily car sickness, I found a center that picked Birdie up last and dropped her off first.  Each new daycare center had a bit more of an upgrade, a little more, for a lot more money.

“How was the center today?” is my first question in my nightly call.

“Okay.”

“Did you exercise?”

“I guess.”

“Made any friends?”

“Like who?”

“Like someone you can have a live conversation with.”

“Oh. There’s what’s her name, and then there’s another one.”

Birdie’s getting testy. I hear it in her voice. But tonight, I’m tired. I’m tired of the start and stops in my life trying to perfect the equation. I’m tired of the M = equation. I’m tired of being my mother’s mother.

I ask her to please behave for just a week more. There’s a work deadline to be met. Then I’ll do what I’ve always done for the past five years: fly across the country and try to figure something else out.

She’s still the master. Instead of an expected shrilled tantrum, she whimpers and then cries. She’s lonely. AT&T isn’t enough of a connection for the elderly, no matter how television ads try to assuage adult-child guilt. The daycare center and attempting to keep Birdie in her home isn’t a perfect balanced equation.

On the flight from Los Angeles to Boston, my briefcase stuffed with independent and assisted living community brochures is reading I’ve avoided. Walking through the airport terminal, I pass as a businessperson. My new trade is acquiring the skills of a parent wrangler. I oversee the organizing, researching, and planning the best situations for my mother. A parent wrangler makes decisions for a parent’s life. It is on-the-job training.

For a fleeting moment, I glance at the waiting faces and, out of habit, search for one that use to wait for me. It’s been years since Birdie met me at the airport, bringing me back to my childhood home. I know that it’s time for the readings I’ve been avoiding. What will be the next equation to balance M?

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Karin Cooper has taught college composition and English courses for over 20 years. With a writing resume of plays and education essays, recent writing interests and challenges are developing a middle-grade novel about a young Angolan boy rescuing a pangolin and a completing a novel with celestial intrigue and romance.

 

Five Stages to Enlightenment

By Eveline Pye

Waking at dawn with indigestion, I decide the Tums must be past their sell-by date. Either that or I’m sick. After a few hours, I google symptom checker. Gender… Female; Age… 59; Part of Body… Chest; Pain… Pressure. The screen blazes a blood red rectangle, large white letters appear, flashing like a lighthouse, ‘CALL 999’. I stare at the screen, incredulous, talk back to the computer, ‘Ach away! That can’t be right,’ then opt for a wee chat with Scotland’s NHS 24 – just for reassurance.

The guy says, ‘Unlock the front door then come back to the phone,’ asks what I weigh, which is irrelevant and cheeky. Out of habit, I knock off half a stone. He says not to worry about the flashing lights on the ambulance. I interrupt to tell him I only called to set my mind at rest and now he’s putting up my blood pressure.

I’m thinking ‘God-sakes, this is out of hand.’ It feels as though I’m Alice and I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. Two men pop up, dressed in identical forest green, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and both shout, ‘Sit down,’ in perfect unison.

I take a deep breath, apologise for wasting their time, ‘Look guys, this is overkill, it doesn’t hurt that much. I didn’t collapse as if I’d been poleaxed like they do on the tv. And I’m not a man.’ They give me matching indulgent smiles and soluble aspirin, carry me out to the ambulance though I tell them I can walk fine. As they manoeuvre the stretcher down the steps, I work out why they wanted to know my weight. Nothing else makes sense.

Ten minutes later we arrive at the Jubilee – which must be the silliest name ever chosen for a hospital. The only jubilant people are those leaving and that’s not including the ones in body bags. The doctor says I need an angiogram, decides to ensure I’m properly informed. ‘Blah, blah, blah… one percent chance of another heart attack during the procedure… blah, blah.  Sign here.’

I hesitate with the pen poised above the paper. He shrugs, ‘I’d do it if I were you.’ I sign on the dotted line, conscious of a new perspective on the phrase, signing your life away. I tell him, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have that Valium after all.’

They wheel me into theatre and decant me onto a steel table. The consultant enters, robed in blue plastic, stands at my side holding a surgical knife, like a priest with a human sacrifice in a gothic horror movie. After the local anaesthetic, he stabs my right wrist. Blood splatters on the machine’s plastic covers.

Next, he injects dye. Three screens light up, angled like the mirrors in my mother’s old dressing table. They reveal my arteries: purple ivy sprouting up towards my heart. The doctor gets all chatty, points out the blockage, sounds very like the plumber I called out when my granddaughter’s plastic fish took a dive down the toilet. It feels bizarre when someone tells you that your life depends on liquid flowing along a narrow tube. 

After a few days at home, I realise the experience has left me with a strong sense of grievance. Public health should let people know that the symptoms of a heart attack are often different for women. And what about scriptwriters? When’s the last time you saw a woman having a heart attack on a tv show? Or a woman having a heart attack while chewing indigestion remedies and fixing breakfast? Without Google I would have been toast on a marble slab.

I follow the consultant’s aftercare advice with a new convert’s zeal, having made an unconscious bargain with a god I don’t believe in. I believe that strict adherence will return my life to normal. The nutritionist tells me to ease up – that I do need some fat in my diet. At my third cardiac rehab exercise class, I get sent back to hospital after pursuing the no pain no gain approach. Lying in the ambulance, mesmerised by the flashing lights and siren, I realise I am handling this heart event very poorly, that I am a hopeless failure, weak willed and stupid.

Then, in a moment of inspiration, I recall an article I read in the British Heart Foundation’s website about the five stages of loss: denial; anger; bargaining; depression; acceptance. Surely this means acceptance is just around the next corner.

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Eveline Pye lives in Clydebank, Scotland and recently retired as a university lecturer in Statistics and Mathematics. She is new to flash fiction but is an established poet with three chapbooks: Smoke That Thunders, Mariscat Press (2015); STEAM, Red Squirrel Press (2022); Reaching the Light, Seahorse Publications (2024).

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The Changing Room

By Laura Winig 

I have fabulous hair—long, thick, auburn locks. I don’t have bad hair days and I don’t spend more than five minutes with it in the morning. I have one hair product in my medicine cabinet and most days I don’t use it.

I think I deserve to have this hair. It’s nature’s cosmic consolation prize, in recognition that my particular cross to bear—my struggle with obesity—could be made lighter with fluffy hair.

I have long appreciated my hair for the gift it is and, once a year, I treat it to a permanent wave. Though I am approaching the three-month anniversary of my weight loss surgery and I’ve been warned that my hair will start falling out soon, I am determined to keep my annual appointment. After all, if I am going to lose some hair, shouldn’t the survivors be the thickest, bushiest hairs I can muster? Maybe nobody will notice I’m a few thousand strands shy if it curls up nicely.

Any fat person will tell you that going to the beauty salon sucks. I know as I walk through the door the other clients are wondering, “Why bother?” But that’s nothing compared to the humiliation of parading past in the smock. Clients are required to strip off their shirts and don an iridescent purple smock which resembles a hospital gown. The largest, about four sizes smaller than me.

Once or twice I’ve tried to demur (“I’m coming down with a cold—should really keep the sweater on…”) but the receptionist just smiles and pushes the smock at me. “You can change in the bathroom. Leave your sweater on the hanger and have a seat at the sinks.”

Cowed into taking the damned thing, I locked the bathroom door, leaned against it and sighed. I’m told the smock will protect my clothing from the toxic chemicals that will soon be curling my hair. They’re not concerned about the carcinogens that’ll be wafting into my lungs or seeping into my scalp but God forbid I get a microscopic stain on my sweater and hold the salon responsible.

I looked at the label: size large. I’m a 2X, no chance it will close in front. I’ll need to clutch each side like a nervous bridegroom holding his jacket lapels, and hope my hands will cover my exposed bra. Even if they do, the smock will bulge open, revealing the flabby belly above my jeans. The ties will hang down to my knees—too short to fasten around my waist.

Emerging from the bathroom, I’ll speed walk down the short hallway to the sinks where Tammi will be waiting with a cape which she’ll quickly throw over me, in conspiratorial agreement that only my head should be exposed to the respectable clientele. All told, a repulsive and immodest sight, but what choice did I have? The hair demanded its due.

I sighed and pulled off my sweater. I contemplated calling out to the receptionist. Maybe they keep jumbo-sized smocks somewhere? But if they do, most likely they’re tucked away in a moldy box in the storage closet. I imagined the receptionist over the intercom, “We need the double-wide smock for Tammi’s client.” After that, it would take the Jaws of Life to pry me out of the bathroom.

A knock on the door startled me. “Just a minute,” I called. I pulled the smock on quickly, tied a fast bow and froze. I stared at myself in the mirror as it registered: it fits. There came a second knock on the door, this one more impatient but I didn’t care. A regular-sized smock for a regular-sized person fits me.

Do I dare try the snaps? I had lost thirty pounds since my last visit but even so, I was far from thin. Slowly, I fastened the first one, and my eyes filled with tears as I realized I would make it to the sinks with my dignity intact. I savored the second snap.

By then I was bawling so I left the third snap undone and tended to my face—a wide grin greeting my gaze into the mirror. I wanted the moment to last, but the smock was vanquished; it was time to go. I opened the door to an angry teenager, but her contemptuous glare could not phase me. I practically floated out to the sinks, glowing as if I was dressed for a debutante ball. And I guess I was.

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Laura Winig is a writer living in Rhode Island.

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