Mark Abdon hails from Indianapolis, Indiana where he teaches Creative Writing at Indiana Wesleyan University. His stories are popping up in places like The Pinch Journal, Catamaran, X-R-A-Y, Chautauqua and others. He also reads for Harvard Review.

K. A. Polzin’s stories have appeared in Subtropics, swamp pink, Gulf Coast, Wigleaf, and elsewhere, and have been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2023 and the Fractured Lit Anthology 3, and chosen for the 2025 Wigleaf Top 50. Polzin is a finalist for The Greensboro Review’s 2025 Robert Watson Literary Prize.

David Williamson is a math teacher by day, writer by night. His short stories and essays have been featured in The First Line, Bellingham Review, The Twin Bill, and 50-Word Stories.

I try my first Strawberry Refresher with Leona at the mall. It’s her first too. Her brother and dad are away for a couple days and we’re having a “girls’ weekend.” Leona gets to choose what we do. So, here we are on a Saturday afternoon in a crowded Starbucks in a pretentious consumer hellscape and I’m moody and broody from long lines and packed parking lots. But here’s my girl, delighted with her cake pop and the fact that we’re actually at the mall, drinking the wonder-woma