'Lamu' by Noel O'Regan

“ As Aisling drives, Noah struggles to match the abandoned streets that now stream past his window with the city he has experienced the past few days – gone is the feeble crawl of traffic, the strangling smell of diesel, the stutter through roundabouts where knuckles harried closed car windows, and hands offered roasted corn on a stick, fresh mangoes, pineapple, and, one time, a kitten.”

Photo by Miville Tremblay, via Flickr.

The August 2017 Long Story, Short offering, 'Lamu', is by Irish writer and Sean Dunne Young Writer winner Noel O'Regan. Join hopeful but uncertain Noah on a road trip with a former flame through Kenya, as they skirt the boundaries of reconnection and dissolution. READ 'LAMU'.

The Frieze of Life by M.S. Pallister

Seven in the morning, I came down to the reception with a duvet wrapped over my pyjamas. The heating in my room had stopped working, again.

'What's the nature of your complaint?' asked the receptionist.

'You're joking, right? I was down here three times yesterday.'

She stared at me, unflinching.

'The nature of my complaint is that my fingers are too bloody numb to type a text to my ex-girlfriend.'

A story of gentle humour and humanity to cool you off in the July heat! M.S. Pallister brings her readers to wintry Oslo in 'The Frieze of Life', where a lovelorn man wanders the Munch museum, dines with strangers in hotels, and spends long afternoons in coffee shops waiting for his last love to come back into his life. READ 'THE FRIEZE OF LIFE'.

Tiny Dancer by Lisa Lang

Photo © Alan McCord

"From her window she watched the street. There were people in good coats – with no pilling, no unflattering bulk – walking with clear purpose, cyclists gliding by. It was late afternoon, night was falling, and the alien, blue-rinsed light settled on her like a kind of despair. She had a sense of being adrift on a vast, indifferent ocean. Whether she ate her dinner or not, went to sleep or stayed awake all night, or even stopped existing, who was to know?" 

Long Story, Short Journal's June 2015 edition is 'Tiny Dancer' : an examination of the solitude required for artistry, detailed in a portrait of a young dancer who is living away from home for the first time. Author Lisa Lang is the recipient of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for her début novel Utopian Man.  CLICK HERE TO READ 'TINY DANCER'. 

The Shawl

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© Jenna Weaver

"They found the shawl on the back of a chair in a bar, forgotten or discarded by its owner. It was beautiful, golden, with many coloured threads woven into it. Robert saw it first, and showed it to Helen .... Robert watched as Helen simply folded it neatly and placed it in her bag."

​'The Shawl' is a dirge of the ties that bind our relationships; the clutch and release in the power struggle to keep hold of the ones we love. This new work is by Brian Kirk, a writer who is as accomplished in poetry as he is in the short story. His image of 'the shawl' will stay with readers, long after they've finished reading. CLICK HERE TO READ 'THE SHAWL'.