Meet Me @ 19th Street
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Welcome to Meet Me @ 19th Street
an online literary journal
1st Quarter 2022 Competition Now Open!
As we begin a new year still steeped in the uncertainty of years past, many of us are looking for areas in life that can still thrive and bring joy, whether we’re traveling in new places or quarantining for weeks. For Meet Me @ 19th Street’s 1st quarter competition, we invite you to submit the first chapter of a novel or short story with food as its centerpiece. Explore the role of food in life, who prepares and eats it, its ties to culture across time and place, and how it may be manipulated into a character itself.
Send us your stories by midnight on March 31, 2022. We will select three winners who each will be awarded $100 and publication in our online literary magazine, Meet Me @ 19th Street. Selected submitters will also be considered for the annual Arch Street Prize, which awards $1,000 and a book publishing contract with Arch Street Press!
2021 Winners
The Worst Kind of Girl
The Worst Kind of Girl Susan Rukeyser“They found another body,” Seth called from the motel’s lone breakfast table, across from my front desk. “Out past the dry lakebed. This one was on fire.” His overgrown, salt-and-pepper hair was wild from the night before. Too much...
Crows Cape
Crows Cape Gretchen WelchAs she lay in bed, Claire listened to the rain. It hit the concrete on almost all sides, sounding all around her domed bedroom. Her morning interrupted by a cacophony of octave pitches. The echoes of the drops filled the cool space, pinging...
Baby Goldman
Baby Goldman Pamela Gwyn KripkePART ONE 1968 As a child, my mother fell asleep listening to the adults at the end of the hall. It was the 1940s, when relatives visited each other in the evenings and sat up and talked. They spoke about the baby, sometimes, the baby boy...
The Hidden Spirit of the Forest
The Hidden Spirit Of The Forest Amelia Herridge IshakThe silence brought on the night. That fresh, crispy stillness that comes as the last of the day’s light slips away beyond the horizon. Time was frozen, the world taking a collective breath, before darkness seeped...
Huge Ships
Huge Ships Peter HankinsAgain he had the powerful sense of being in the presence of death. Not feeling haunted or terrified: something calmer, as if he were walking in a graveyard. He knew it was no good lying in the dark waiting for his mind to move on (he’d tried...
Blue in Green
Blue In Green E J DrogaIt was a sort of longing:a piercing, soulful arc rising from a warm melody, dancing through the air like a ballerina upon the stage, twirling and spinning, flowing through your imagination. Calling from the background, those plaintive notes...
Aperitivo
Aperitivo Madeleine HolmesChapter One: Aperitivo I look down at the straw hat that floats idly on the sparkling surface, its peach ribbon trailing in the turquoise Caribbean Sea. Somewhere beneath the sea is my mother. And for what seems like an eternity, she’s no...
Let the Hounds Give Tongue
A Natural History of the Ten Years I Knew My Father
Turnings
Turnings Cope CumpstonThe poster was taped on a wall in the science building hallway. A schooner leaned tall into whitecaps, sails swollen with wind against an immense blue sky. The banner above, Openings: oceanographic apprentices for the Research Vessel Westward....
2020 Winners
My Plural Is People
My Plural Is People Anndee Hochman“Zachary Kahn-Molina, do you have siblings?” Mr. Rattrazino paused, stub of yellow chalk cinched between his second and third fingers like the suave, chain-smoking lead of a 1930s movie. Rattrazino—mostly, we called him “Mr. R,”...
Cottonwood Rust
Cottonwood Rust Steven Wight“You did say Gypsum?” said the lady behind the airport information desk. “Yes, Gypsum,” replied Annie. “Is there a problem?” “No. It’s just most people want information about Vegas. I’ll check and see what accommodations are in Gypsum. You...
Catalyst
Catalyst Rachel WongThe leaves were stubborn, adamantly holding onto the trees from which they’d sprouted. Even after their colors shifted from jade to amber to gold, they resisted the icy wind that came soaring up the Hudson Valley and through the wide streets of...
Blue Zone
Blue Zone Seren SenseiDo you have experience utilizing screens for data entry? Y/N Are you 16 or older? Y/N Have you ever spent time in Rehabilitation? Y/N Have you or any of your family members ever been chosen? Y/N Amber St. Clair stared at the questionnaire in...
The Bargeman’s Daughter: Seneca Village Arises
The Bargeman’s Daughter: Seneca Village Arises Thomas BeltonA day after the Nativist riot at Saint Patrick’s Church in downtown Manhattan, Annie Hogan awoke with an awful headache to the sounds of singing in a cabin she’d never seen before. A young girl was making...
2019 WINNERS
What Happened Then
What Happened Then Paula FriedmanEven in the birthmothers’ groups, I have been told, “You had some choice.” I was no frightened teenager, after all, but a highly educated radical, “running around with those other tie-dyed, fanatic, family-dumping spongers through the...
Alice
Alice Virginia CramerIt was when I went to bury Alice that I understood she wasn’t dead. And I understood that she wasn’t going to die for a long time, and that people aren’t dead when they die, and you can’t kill them. People die slowly, sometimes too slowly, and in...
Storming the Castle
Storming the Castle Peter E. Murphy“I think there’s someone in there,” Twiz says, pressing her one good eye against the beveled-glass door of The Windsor Castle Hotel, which is neither a castle nor a hotel, but a run-down pub in Newport, a run-down city in South...
Kill for Love
Kill for Love Laura PicklesimerEvery night I dreamt of fire, of Santa Monica Boulevard up in flames, blocks of designer merchandise torched to the ground, windows shattered, mannequins melted onto their steel pedestals. I dreamt of one spectacular disaster each night....
The Young White Girl
The Young White Girl Luke KingsburyCongdon Park Municipal Code of Conduct and CommunityArticle A, Subsection 1, Clause A: The Congdon Council, made up of five highly-qualified elected officials, must maintain, create, and enforce laws that protect a safe and thriving...
A Little Light
A Little Light Lori D. JohnsonChapter 1 It’s 8 something in the morning and Tina is standing at the corner of Pharaoh and Sphinx with her arms folded across her chest and her jaws as tight as Mike Tyson’s clenched fists. But all the while, the bright morning sun is...
Ahkii-Savior
Ahkii-Savior Kai QuallsChapter 1 Savior “It true began in the time of sorrows, the period of mourning in the aftermath of the all-gods war. As the Sumai’a tell it, the blood soaked soil gave them birth. From the essence of god-death and the power of Ahki’i they were...
Ruth vs. Bender
Ruth vs. Bender Kevin KingAs far as hayseed James Atwood Gray knew, or even Moe Berg for that matter, there was no God of Peace. So in what god’s eye was the glint that gave light to Babe Ruth’s All Americans touring Japan as 1934 concluded? **** The RMS Empress of...
2018 winners
Shelter Me
Shelter Me Kirby FieldsNana is in one corner, threatening to call the police. Dad is in the other telling her to go ahead and do it. She holds the phone in her left hand, her right index finger hovering over the keypad like she’s about to detonate a bomb. My brothers...
Mother of a Hanged Girl
Mother of a Hanged Girl Chad V. BroughmanDamp winds lashed at the town square, tipping hats and rustling papery leaves against the scaffold. Ruth’s bonnet lifted and a lock of reddish-yellow hair spilled over her eye. The girl forgot her hands were bound and when she...
A Fool’s Errand
A Fool’s Errand John GalvinI was drafted a year out of high school, was shuttled from Ft. Knox to Ft. Dix to Ft. Bliss, spent a year in Tacoma, Washington. There were no wars at the time, only tensions, so I never made it over seas. When I was discharged, I returned...
What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me
What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me Donna GordonChapter 1 Lee knew for a fact that his obituary was already written, by the same reporter who interviewed President Jimmy Carter last fall, shortly after his election. He hoped the headline would be dignified. Lee...
The Blacksmith’s Daughter
The Blacksmith’s Daughter Patrick Vala-HaymesBlood and iron have always had much the same scent for me. I have never been one to blanch or wrinkle my nose at either. • • • Winter blew through the open gate of the smithy. I peeked out from beneath the canopy of my...
I Hum Delilah
I Hum Delilah Tej Rae1. Place de L’Obélisque Find the tire on the bank of the weed-choked canal, treads faded to brick-red sludge. Roll it. With quick steps and quicker hands to the middle of the road that connects the university to the rest of the city. Drag a bed...