Center for Mennonite Writing

CMW Journal

Emerging Writers

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  Oracle

  by Kate Stoltzfus

  "Oracle" won first prize in the best free verse poem category from the Indiana Collegiate Press Association's Literary Magazine Competition in April 2013. The poem was published in Red Cents, 2012, the award-winning creative arts journal of the Goshen College English Department.

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  Elder Song

  by Mary Roth

  "Elder Song" won second prize in the best free verse poem category from the Indiana Collegiate Press Association's Literary Magazine Competition in April 2013. The poem was published in Red Cents, 2012, the award-winning creative arts journal of the Goshen College English Department.

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  Five Poems on Travel

  by Sarah Kortemeier

  From Ground Zero to Hiroshima, these poems create a network of perceptions, gently holding the globe as a whole while honoring silent spaces.

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  Two Poems on the Past

  by Jennifer Jantz Estes

  These two poems draw on the author's recognition of her heritage within the farming and Mennonite communities of central Kansas.

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  Three Poems on Place

  by Julie Swarstad Johnson

  The first two poems below come from Pennsylvania Furnace, a manuscript which explores the history of the iron industry in central Pennsylvania.

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  The Club

  by Lucy Bryan Green

  Cally studies the rack of free weights and notes that someone has swapped the twenty and twenty-five pound dumbbells. She rearranges them, then picks up the forty-pounders sitting beneath the weight bench and returns them to the rack. On her way back to the counter, she sees a gold thread ...

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  Surviving

  by Greta Holt

  After Leslie was killed, I walked the streets of Gaborone until the Botswana Bandanna caught my eye. Having nothing better to do, I went in to have my hair ‘tonged, frozen, wrapped, pineappled, ponied, braided or cockscrewed’ as the sign outside advertised. I asked the proprietress, a large woman wrapped ...

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  Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen

  by Nathan Malenke

  Buck’s biggest disappointment in his son’s ninth birthday wasn’t Jimmy’s lackluster response to his gift, but instead Jimmy’s decision to name his new hamster Armstrong.

  “Buzz. Buzz is a good name,” Buck had insisted until he had felt the pressure of Mary’s hand on ...