Emily Zhang’s “History of Navigation” received third place in the 2015 Glazner Prize for Creative Writing contest, sponsored by SFUAD’s Creative Writing and Literature Department.   On Atlantic Street a girl lies on the street with vultures in her throat, the moon melting into the eggshell of her eyes   melting into me. I don’t know if she swallowed the sky or if the sky swallowed her, but she is spilled like a run   on sentence, preserved in past tense and the holy glow of streetlight. An exercise in forbearance. Two months   after my grandfather said the name of what would kill him, we spilled salt on our tongues and drank soup too sparse to be   unstill. My uncle drove without a seatbelt swathed across his shoulders. He drove until he saw a lake that wrapped its fingers   around the sky’s neck and exhaled while the sky inhaled. Until he saw a bird and tried to catch it, but its wings broke off   when he grazed it, and he closed his palms over its eyes and pressed, learned that he couldn’t protect anything anymore.   Six years ago a man on the telephone told her to put her hands between her thighs and squeeze and she told him nothing.   A ritual in reverse. All I know is that we all have the animal want in our stomachs to float, that they are burning newspapers   on Atlantic Street now. When the universe was first beginning a bird took a flashlight from a trashcan and dropped it   into a beautiful coffin. In five hundred years someone will unearth this moment without the girl, in the wicked heat of June,   tucked in concrete like an exhalation. I wish I...

“Hair” by Joseph Jordan-Johnson received second place in the 2015 Glazner Prize for Creative Writing contest, sponsored by SFUAD’s Creative Writing and Literature Department.   Roots I have my father’s hairline. A widow’s jut in the middle of my forehead. I have naps—scalp clumsy.   His waves were smooth, current-cut, razor-precise. He never told me how he keeps the gray from creeping in.   He is 53, a silver fox smile cutting from ear to ear. My scalp is too oily, lacquered, pore-thick.   My hair runs bristle wired, strung, dry and clumped. I have ignored how he taught to keep it clean.               Cut They are rigored, the coroner’s faint clipper buzz is a lullaby.   There seems to be less hair on the floor each time I cut,   less tufts to sweep, less bodies to hide.                               Shower It is hot, in the way that pain cries. Holy, in God’s new breath,   it is His steam that will bring more wrath than Murray’s wave gel,   the things my father always used. The things I learned to hate.               Shave More scratch than bite— less rough along the grain. The basin of the tub   runs black and red, nicks of hair crawling to the drain.   I hear them howl, there is wrath in each pull each razor-tear each   pore less bloody than the other. They are him, not His.               Dry Fresh. Something God has assumed. Something only death can say. I am bulbous, not whitehead, not ready to pop.   There are years I have shaved– fifty-three bags all in a pile. The buzz has stopped. The wrath looks less bloody. The zipper closes.   Joseph Jordan-Johnson is a senior at...

As a part of an ongoing Q&A session with the Creative Writing and Literature Department’s Senior Reading Class, Jackalope Magazine sat down with Zoe Baillargeon. Baillargeon discussed hashtags, learning to be funny and late night television hosts.   Jackalope Magazine: How dare you? Zoe Baillargeon: I just do. You know? I am me.   JM: How did you get into writing? ZB: I was originally a writer as a little girl, and then I got sidetracked by theater. Then during a study abroad, I realized I didn’t want to be in theater anymore, I wanted to be a writer.   JM: What genre do you work in and why? ZB: Usually fiction but I’m going into nonfiction at the moment. I just think that fiction was easier to start off in. I never really considered myself a poet. In nonfiction I just felt like my life wasn’t interesting enough; then I learned how to be funny. Then, I learned how to put a twist on my life.   JM: What three words would you use to describe your writing? ZB: Quirky, sarcastic and off the wall.   JM: What’s the worst thing you’ve ever written? ZB: A story written entirely in hashtags about a basic bitch owning a bonsai tree, and she chronicles that on Twitter, and basically ends up killing the tree.   JM: Why was that the worst thing you ever wrote? ZB: Because it was written entirely in hashtags! (laughs) It was an experiment.   JM: How do you balance work and family? ZB: Lots of stress. There’s not really balance at the moment.   JM: Marry, Fuck, Kill: Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. ZB: Oh man. Fuck Jon Stewart, because hell yeah. Marry Jimmy Fallon and I guess...

No writer’s block here! For the month of November, 18 SFUAD students are combating writers’ infamous procrastination by signing on to participate in National Novel Writing Month. More commonly referred to as NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month began in 1999, and has since grown into a nonprofit organization with a global following. Aspiring novelists can sign up on the NaNoWriMo website, track their daily progress and average word counts, and connect with other writers for motivation and communal support. The goal? A 50,000 word novel by 11:59 pm on Nov. 30. “My daily average is about 1,600 words a day,” says freshman creative writing major Charlotte Renken, one of the admins on the SFUAD NaNoWriMo Facebook page. This is her third year participating in the event. “It’s going great so far,” she enthuses, dishing the dirt on her project this year, which involves a vegan surviving the zombie apocalypse, and is her first foray into humor writing. Nicholas Thomas, a fellow scrivener, sees NaNoWriMo as a stepping stone toward working on his larger project, a multi-book exploration of the world of Eldali. “This is just a springboard, I’m gonna keep working on it, but it (NaNoWriMo) is a great way to get shit done!” says Thomas, who, a huge fan of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, has been developing the fantasy world saga and its inhabitants for several years. Opinions on NaNoWriMo’s effectiveness and usefulness are divided, with many proponents saying it’s an effective tool for pumping out a first draft, no matter how bad, while others believe it puts undue stress on writers and therefore undermines the writing process and the work being produced. “NaNoWriMo epitomizes the desires and the impatience of instant culture,” says James Reich, a faculty member in the Creative...