Angela Qian reads from her short story, “We Were There,” which appears in our Fall/Winter 2020 Issue. Qian’s work first caught our readers’ interest with its beautiful attention to detail. “The author has a gift for visceral descriptions, for creating an atmosphere,” one reader noted. Another reader was compelled by the thought-provoking imagery, and even more readers will be keeping… [Read More]

Justin Noga reads from his short story, “An Egg Begets an Egg,” from our Fall/Winter 2020 Issue. Fiction editor, Wendy Wimmer, writes “Justin Noga bottled hot lightning in a Mason jar. The lines that clinched me were ‘He ordered biking attire, but only got the socks, thigh-high. He made do.’ Plus, hard-boiled eggs in unexpected places, what’s not to like?”… [Read More]

Eli Jacobs reads from his essay, “Long Hard Day,” from our Fall/Winter 2020 Issue. This work was originally among the finalists for the 2020 Literary Awards, and our nonfiction editor, Cody Gambino, enjoyed it so much he snatched it up for this issue. Our readers commented that this piece really took up an emotional resonance with them, and appreciated the… [Read More]

Doris W. Cheng reads from her short story, “The Choice, 1988” from Witness Magazine’s Fall/Winter 2020 Issue. Fiction Editor, Wendy Wimmer, noted that this story “was such an arrow into my heart. A primer in exquisite narrative.” Our readers were quickly captivated by Cheng’s ability to wield the power of the second person point of view as a means to… [Read More]

Arianne Zwartjes reads from her essay, “Cities of Broken Teeth, Cities of Dust and Blood” from Witness Magazine’s Fall/Winter 2020 Issue. Our readers were drawn into this thought-provoking and lyric work in which Zwartjes explores devastation in the wake of human cruelty and violence in times of war. It is an artful composition at a heartbreaking timbre; we hope you… [Read More]

Kristina Ten reads an excerpt from her short story, “Two Hundred Ways to Disappear,” from our Fall/Winter 2020 Issue. Our readers quickly fell in love with this one, and Fiction Editor, Wendy Wimmer, notes that this story “is one that I kept thinking about for weeks… …The boyfriend, the hole, the language how it twisted and cajoled. The sentences are… [Read More]

Molly Reid reads from her Pushcart-nominated short story, “Talk with Stranger,” which appears in our Fall/Winter 2020 Issue. This story was selected as a finalist in our second Witness Literary Fiction Awards, and we liked it so much we just had to have it for the issue. Reid’s work is beautifully rendered as she wields tension deftly throughout this piece…. [Read More]

Adrie Rose reads a selection of work along with her Pushcart-nominated poem, “The Anthropocene” (4:00), which appears in Witness Magazine’s Fall/Winter 2020 Issue. Rose’s poem became a prescient mantra for the work we selected in this season of pre- and full-pandemic lockdown. Where she writes “The seasons / are coming loose,” we caught a glimmer of what would become the… [Read More]

Two Witness Weekends left! We are so thrilled to be sharing readings from our Magic issue all month long; join us every Saturday and Sunday for new videos from contributors and 2020 Lit Award winners. This weekend, we’re celebrating work from Kristina Ten. Ten’s enchanting short story, “The Dramatic Haircut”, exists in a wild world that plunks the main character… [Read More]