Issues

Issue 1: Autumn 

Within Heimat’s first issue, you will find twenty seven striking pieces that work together to tell a wonderful story of reflection, of looking back and moving forward.

Issue 2: Winter

Our second issue delves into the intricate tapestry of human experience with thirty thought-provoking pieces that explore themes of loss, music, identity, and relationships.

Issue 3: Spring

Issue 3 features thirty captivating poems, short stories, and CNF essays centred around growth and change. From heart-wrenching tales to uplifting moments and lovely turns of phrase, this issue has it all.

Issue 4: Summer

This issue is filled with resilience, finding joy in unexpected places, and embracing the present moment. Many of the thirty-two pieces within detail weather, summer storms, tempests of physical and metaphorical kinds.

Issue 5

Coming this Sunday!

Issue 6

Issue 6 will be published in April 2024. This will be a themed issue. More info to come in the next two months.

Issue 5: Storytelling Beyond Literature

Cover art: “Dad’s Oar” by Helen Gwyn Jones

Editor’s Letter

Dear readers,
​
Text... ​Exploration of place, both physical locations and their historical or personal significance.
Themes of resilience, finding joy in unexpected places, and embracing the present moment. "Scampton" collects all these stories, readers’ stories and places them together, wide open spaces).

If you know me personally as an English teacher, you have likely heard me talk your ear off about storytelling--Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” in particular. In every course I teach, this video makes its way into the first week. It shapes everything we do afterward. One of my favorite parts is her statment, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

I’ve always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging properly with all the stories of that place or that person. The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar . . . Stories matter. Many stories matter.

“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” 

Just as Adichie laments that her own culture's story is suppressed into stereotypes, I and other English teachers asked our students to reflect on this talk and write a response entitled, “What I wish you knew…”. What do you wish that people really knew about this aspect of your identity? I, thinking teenagers on the first week of school would give me half-hearted responses, was unprepared and humbled by the depth of thought and care in most responses I received. These students spoke of being new to the city, the country, the language. Some had a dual-language dictionary next to them while writing, but the fire in their eyes spoke volumes. These students knew something about storytelling. We all do. 

And because we know about storytelling, we have seen the uglier side where we 

Welcome to Issue 4.

Sincerely,
Hannah Cole Orsag
​Editor-in-Chief
Not sure where to start?
​Here are our favorite lines and passages from the pieces in this issue: Snippets of Issue 4

Narratives Threads: As Above, so Below

Dad’s Oar by Helen Gwyn Jones // Visual Art
Above Ground by Author // Visual Art
Configuration by Author // Visual Art

Once Upon a Time...

Storytelling by Author // Poetry
The Coming of Whales ​by Author // Fiction

The Magic's in the Telling

Oceanside by Author // Fiction
Moebius Strip ​by Author // Fiction

My Family through the Rearview Mirror

Displaced Person by Author // CNF
Language isn't what matters by Author // Poetry
between a drowning man by Author // Poetry
Legacy by Author // Poetry
Multiverse Ars Poetica by Author // Poetry
Reverse Migration by Author // Poetry

Thunderstruck

*CW: some pieces in this section include mentions of death and/or depictions of violence.
Elderberry Wine and Jack Daniels* by Author // CNF
To a Father, Never Known by Author // Poetry
An Old Friend* by Author // Fiction
Daphne by Author // Poetry
Maybe Today ​by Author // Fiction

A Tale of Who We Were Then

Summer Storm on East 38th Street by Joan Hagy // Poetry
The Archaeology of Dreams by Kathy Gentile // Poetry
Laces by Sandra Coffey // Fiction
Green in Amber by E. H. Warrington // CNF
The Mailbox by Chaya Friedman // Fiction
A Big Quarry in a Small Place Named Genoa by Jeremy Schnee // CNF

Here We Find Grace

Stormy Weather by Jacqueline Goyette // CNF
Joy in Unexpected Fields by Elizabeth Bird // CNF
Murfreesboro by Hart Christopher Vetter // CNF
Storm Shelter by Bethany Cutkomp // Fiction
Grief Manifests as Dancing in the Animal Crossing Butterfly Exhibit by Ashley McCurry // Fiction
His Butterfly by Thomas Elson // Poetry

Open Spaces

Summer in a Box by Yitzchak Friedman // Fiction
Scampton by Dominic Rivron // Poetry

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