A letter from the desk of HDJ’s founding Editor, Elizabeth Quinn.

by E.E. McCollum

Photographer E.E. McCollum uses a Holga—a plastic camera known for its low-fi aesthetic—to offer a unique perspective of the North American west.

by Tyler Toy

“As much as she can look into Lorna's eyes, she cannot tell if Lorna feels any sense of her mortality, any sense that she is old, reaching the end of her body, the end of what her bones and muscles and heart and lungs will sustain”…

by Lena (Sunada-Matsumura) Newlin

“Some years, an afternoon hail storm passes through, stripping the leaves and fruit down to their stems, and within minutes I lose everything that I have cultivated. But our stomachs don’t know the pangs of hunger”…

by Kathryn Wilder

“I stand beside this pool and you ask what I think when I see a pool like this.

‘The pool and my body,’ I say”…

by Connie Wieneke

“as if a great horned owl
with its spit-muck feathers and agile bones
needs know anything about clear title”…

by Margo Chávez

“I have always been lured by the call of the “there.” And I have been lured by the call of the “here.” Torn between the two. Stay or go? Go or stay? I have gone far away”…

by Gretchen Schulz

“One washboard road traces
the length of that valley”…

by Nancy Beauregard

“black birds / bobbing for oil
in stripped fields / of burnt weeds”…

by Penny Orwick

“Stuck between mountains and mines,
she sees only what she’s always seen“…

by Crystal Bevers

“As I look at this girl-child through the lens of memory, I am awed by her. I only now remember she existed—born of bones and desert and life and death—herself powerful, glorious, and untamed“…

Need some inspo to kick off a productive writing weekend? Check out this great writing prompt from HDJ Board Member Stacy Boe Miller . . .

by Ana Consuelo Matiella

“At night, I yearn for a dark sky blasted by stars. At dawn, I yearn for the coyotes that lived so close to my house on the mesa I could hear their yelping“…

by Karissa Chouinard Carmona

“Even sunsets leave a bruise”…

by Keith Polette

“Remember to speak softly to whatever is rumbling behind your strongest persona. This is how you can invite the light”…

by August Brown

“Summer was settling in and nothing was left but the throbbing freeway and the broken bodies of the ones who hadn’t made it out.“…

by Beihua Guo

Los Angeles-based artist Beihua Guo uses projection, news headlines, and archived photographs to explore the troubled and still-unfolding story of the Los Angeles aqueduct and the environment and people it impacted.

by E.M. Sloan

"Had I conceded, I would not have enjoyed spouting a few rounds of Billie Joe McAllister up on Choctaw Ridge as I cruised American Ridge. Or savored the pleasure of that knoll-top residence reminiscent of Tuscany, edged with this fall’s dazzling Lombardy poplar trees stabbing the sky"…

Oh yeah, you were going to have a weekend of nonstop writing, right? Need a little nudge to get going? Here’s an idea from HDJ Editor, Corey Oglesby . . .

by William Cass

“She’d never seen a soul there and was glad to consider it abandoned until she arose early one morning in mid-December to find a beat-up sedan and a pick-up truck parked haphazardly in front of it”. . .