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Witness Magazine

Witness blends the features of a literary and an issue-oriented magazine to highlight the role of the modern writer as witness to his or her times. Launched in Detroit in 1987, the magazine is best known for showcasing work that defines its historical moment; special issues have focused on political oppression, religion, the natural world, crime, aging, civil rights, love, ethnic America, and exile. The issues “New Nature Writing,” “The Sixties,” “Sports in America,” and “The Best of Witness, 1987 – 2004” eventually appeared as university press anthologies. In 2007, Witness moved to Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The magazine publishes one print issue and one online issue a year, and increasingly seeks out work that contextualizes the American experience by highlighting issues of global concern.

Editor’s Note on This Issue

Vol. XXXIV No. 2 – Winter 2021 In the depths of the pandemic, we have had to reimagine much. We have had to consider our habits and behaviors in both close quarters as well as across new mediums. We have had to examine the fabric of our social structures and relationships. We have had to… [Read More]

Vol. XXXIV No. 2 – Winter 2021

A Note on This Issue   Poetry Hadara Bar-Nadav, Touchless Entry* Nancy Chen Long, Orbit Jose Hernandez Diaz, The Golden Telescope* Jennifer H. Dracos-Tice, On Learning Your Birth Mother Might Have Watched You Swing* Jenny Hykes Jiang, China Virus* Edward Mayes, Nor Any Know I Know the Art and ‘Tis News As Null As Nothing… [Read More]

Letter to a Mỹ Lai Mother

By Witness Magazine
Nonfiction•Vol. 34 No. 2

by Jade Hidle You’ve always been asked-told you are “Mỹ lai,” meaning American, meaning white. You’ve always been halved.  Even though we share the same body, you won’t remember me. Because we became unrecognizable to each other. For what felt like an endless period of time, despite the fact that, by the calendar, it was… [Read More]

Queer Seoul

By Witness Magazine
Nonfiction•Vol. 34 No. 2

by Mee Ok Icaro After wading through the Seoulite crowds with their iPhone screens blazing tiny future K-pop stars into the night, Dee and I hit up a convenient store for snacks and beer before settling onto a bench in one of the many hangout areas. There was something so relaxed about my newfound friend… [Read More]

Unscented

By Witness Magazine
Nonfiction•Vol. 34 No. 2

by Andi Brown When I return home at night, I’m careful not to kiss my wife. It’s by mutual agreement. It was a routine we had before COVID, when all we had to worry about was MRSA, C-diff, and any human fluids that might get on my scrubs. In lieu of kisses, I strip my… [Read More]

Goodbye to Mr. Wonderfull

By Witness Magazine
Fiction•Vol. 34 No. 2

by Robert Brian Mulder My ex-boyfriend’s name is Tripp Pham, but I recently learned that for the past year or so a group of people have been referring to him as Mr. Wonderfull. As in Full of Wonder. When an almost-friend at work showed me the website on her phone in the bathroom, I leaned… [Read More]

All My Niggas Was White – Notes from the Color Line

By Witness Magazine
Nonfiction•Vol. 34 No. 2

by Sean Enfield   The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. —W.E.B. DuBois   Tamir Rice was shot twice within seconds of two cleveland police officers arriving on the scene. He was 12 years old, brandishing an airsoft gun, and guilty of playing while black. He died the following… [Read More]

The Little Mermaid

By Witness Magazine
Fiction•Vol. 34 No. 2

by Jennifer Lorene Ritenour Her scales are the size of silver dollars. Her green hair mystically covers her breasts. Water drips from her fin and turns into pearls that she strings with the thread of her hair. Her pinky nail is the needle. She sits on a rock in the middle of the night, waiting… [Read More]

Sojourn

By Witness Magazine
Fiction•Vol. 34 No. 2

by Christopher Linforth Mateo, it is very late. Let me try once more. A few years after the war, I left Hrvatska without a word and started my life again in Norway. Even as I stepped onto the plane, I knew you would be unaware for some time of the circumstances surrounding my abrupt departure…. [Read More]

Northern Lights

By Witness Magazine
Fiction•Vol. 34 No. 2

by Christina Leo A Witness Weekends read: scroll down to watch the author read an excerpt of this story At the tilted pole of a distant planet on the date of the summer solstice, the eyes of a young astronomer reflect the faint glow of a radio-sized machine which measures the countdown to sunrise. This… [Read More]

Blue Faced Honeyeater

By Witness Magazine
Fiction•Vol. 34 No. 2

by Aiden Baker Over the years, my wife developed peculiar habits. The strangest, my favorite, is the way she will, on occasion, scrunch up her face and give birth to fruit. The first time she did it we were at the zoo. We’d spent the day wandering along the gravel paths, pointing at elephants and… [Read More]

The Scooter-Rickshaw Driver

By Witness Magazine
Fiction•Vol. 34 No. 2

by Bipin Aurora I wanted to go home to Sarita Vihar and I walked up to the scooter-rickshaw on the side of the road. I asked the driver to take me there. “No,” he said. “No?” I said. “I am not going in that direction. I am going Jumna-paar (across the Jumna River).” “I will give you… [Read More]

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