Use this prompt as an entry point into our June contest theme: Creative Side Quests.

This week, we turn to the wisdom of and his new book, Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again—a handbook inspired by Kleon’s creative kids. In it, he invites us to embrace the curiosity of a child:

“Kids are naturally curious about the the world and want to know more about it. Their open-mindedness, innocence, and naivety—the traits many adults see as their job to help kids grow out of—are exactly the things most creative people manage to hold on to.”

He goes on:

“The questions you ask contain clues for what you need to do next.”

Children notice things. They ask questions. They become fascinated by subjects that adults might dismiss as impractical, strange, or unimportant. They trust their curiosities to be valuable.

📝 WEEKLY PROMPT

This week, make a list of things you’re curious about.

What questions do you keep circling? What do you keep reading about, noticing, collecting, or returning to? Be specific and playful.

Then, choose one curiosity or question from your list and begin following it on the page.

This weekly companion prompt is free and open to everyone. No submission required.

Keep reading for an editorial note and guidance from our judges, Matt Trinetti & Lindsey Trout Hughes.

Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team

A Note from &

Curiosity is one of the most reliable creative instincts we have. It points us toward what feels alive and leads us toward surprise. It often knows where we need to go long before our logical minds have caught up.

Austin Kleon writes that children create with “wild energy, raw passion, and a lightness of touch.” They follow what fascinates them without worrying whether it’s useful, marketable, or profound. They trust their interests and allow themselves to wander.

This week, we invite you to list your curiosities and questions, big and small, then choose one thread and follow it onto the page. You don’t need to know where it will lead. You only need to trust that your curiosity is worth your attention.

If you want to follow these questions and curiosities further, join us in July for our free five-week creative experimental popup: Creative Side Quests.

Creative Side Quests

A five-week summer experiment in curiosity, creative play, and making things in good company.

By Matt Trinetti

✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour

Work on this week’s prompt at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints. It’s the perfect environment to focus, share space with other writers, and make progress on your writing. Craving craft insights and a creative community? Explore Membership.

🔒 Enter the June Contest:

Paid subscribers and LWS members: Ready to submit your contest entry? Read more below.

If you’d like to enter this month, upgrade now—you’ll unlock the submission link instantly.

How to Enter the June Contest:

Read more about this month’s contest, or submit your entry now:

Read more

Use this prompt as an entry point into our June contest theme: Creative Side Quests.

This week, we turn to the wisdom of and her new book, A Creative Compass.

Emma describes a creative compass as “your personal navigation system that points you towards your best, most fulfilling creative life.”

She reminds us that the phrase follow your heart isn’t only metaphorical. Emma writes,

“The heart itself is an inbuilt compass. I love the Rumi quote: ‘Let your-self be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.’”

📝 WEEKLY PROMPT

Make a list of what you love.

Include the big things and the small things: subjects, questions, places, artists, books, songs, animals, collections, objects, foods, colors, landscapes, historical periods, buildings, hobbies, rituals, memories, and recurring fascinations.

What do you find yourself returning to again and again?

This weekly companion prompt is free and open to everyone. No submission required.

Keep reading for an editorial note and guidance from our judges, & .

Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team

A Note from &

This week, make a list of the things you love. Include the obvious and the obscure. Be specific where you can.

Your list might include a particular bird, a typeface, a neighborhood diner, that one shade of blue. Ghost stories. Roller coasters. Weather reports. Pickles. The moon. List them all. Nothing is too small or too strange.

Then look for the patterns. What subjects, images, questions, places, or experiences keep reappearing? What do they reveal about your curiosities or your longings?

Our loves and obsessions are often clues. They point toward the work that feels most alive to us, the questions we want to spend time with, and the creative side quests waiting to be followed.

If you want to follow these loves further, join us for a free five-week creative experiment. Simply subscribe to to join us.

Creative Side Quests

A five-week summer experiment in curiosity, creative play, and making things in good company.

By Matt Trinetti

✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour

Work on this week’s prompt at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints. It’s the perfect environment to focus, share space with other writers, and make progress on your writing. Craving craft insights and a creative community? Explore Membership.

🔒 Enter the June Contest:

Paid subscribers and LWS members: Ready to submit your contest entry? Read more below.

If you’d like to enter this month, upgrade now—you’ll unlock the submission link instantly.

How to Enter the June Contest:

Read more about this month’s contest, or submit your entry now:

Read more

This month, we want you to write toward a creative project that doesn’t yet exist.

JUNE CONTEST THEME:

Creative Side Quests

For your submission, send us a piece of writing of up to 1,000 words that explores something you feel pulled toward making, learning, investigating, or becoming. We are interested in the unfinished thing.

You might write about an artistic obsession, an imaginary project, a new medium you want to try, or a creative ambition that feels slightly unhinged.

Tell us what it is, why it matters, and what might happen if you gave yourself permission to follow it.

And then, if you’re ready, come make it with us.

This summer, Matt and Lindsey are launching , a free five-week pop-up. It’s an experiment in curiosity, creative play, and actually beginning the project that has been waiting for you.

Your June contest entry might become the first map.

Submission details, deadline, and FAQs are below.

Meet Our Guest Judges: Matt & Lindsey

is a writer, publisher, TEDx speaker, and cofounder of London Writers’ Salon. Prior to LWS, Matt spent a decade helping thousands of individuals around the world navigate career changes, start businesses, and build purposeful careers. He writes SEEKING with Matt on Substack and is working on a project at the intersection of creativity and place.

is a writer and editor of creative nonfiction. A former columnist at Catapult, her writing has appeared in Bright Wall/Dark Room, The Audacity, The Rumpus, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, and elsewhere. She serves as Head of Membership and Member Experience at the London Writers’ Salon and is founding co-editor of Writers’ Hour Magazine. Previously, she was Assistant Books Editor at Barrelhouse.

Join Matt & Lindsey this summer for a 5-week pop-up experiment in creative acts.

Creative Side Quests

A five-week summer experiment in curiosity, creative play, and making things in good company.

By Matt Trinetti

A Note from Matt & Lindsey

Over the next four Sundays, we’ll share a prompt designed to help you find your way toward the thing that is calling to you. We’ll gather inspiration from the work of , , , and . Each week, we’ll look through the window of a different writer, artist, or creative thinker, using their work as a way to notice our own longings more clearly.

Together, these prompts will invite you to follow your curiosity, return to abandoned fascinations, pay attention to what keeps tugging at you, and begin naming the project, question, medium, obsession, or experiment that wants more of your attention. By the end of the month, we hope you have a glimpse of what you want to make next.

Read more about the contest and submit your entry.

NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

🗺️ June 2026 at London Writers’ Salon

Explore what’s happening at LWS this month: live conversations with Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Tara Menon, and , workshops on travel writing and screenwriting structure, Agent & Editor Hours, plus a new Design Your Creative Side Quest workshop with Matt and Lindsey. Read the full June lineup here.

🎯 Free Goal Setting Workshop Replay

Missed our June goal-setting workshop? The replay of Make June Your Month of Writing is now available. In this 1-hour session, we’ll help you clarify what matters most and set meaningful writing goals for the month ahead. Watch the replay here.

✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour

Work on your contest submission at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints.

Craving more craft insights and a creative community? Learn about Membership.

Congratulations to the winners of How Artists Survive!

We are thrilled to share the contest results for April 2026. Special thanks once again to our guest judge, .

• First Place: Tree Hands by Claire Patton

• Second Place: How to [ ] Corporate America by Xi Chen

• Third Place: Poems for Joy: Leaving That Job by Jacqueline Shea Murphy

And congratulations to the winners of Time Travel!

We’re also excited to share the contest results for our 24 Hour Writing Contest.

• First Place: Poof! by Mary Guterson

• Second Place: Persistence of Time by Emily Samples

• Third Place: Bicycle Time Trap by Valerie Free

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who participated. It’s a pleasure to share these pieces with you, and we can’t wait to see what you create in the next contest!

Contest info

The winning entries will receive:

First Prize:

• $135 USD (£100 GBP)

• Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine

• 3-months of London Writers’ Salon Silver Membership (£99 value)

• 3-Month Chill Subs Better Membership (£25 value)

• Commemorative Writers’ Hour trophy mug (priceless)

Second Prize:

• Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine

• 1-month of London Writers’ Salon Silver Membership (£37 value)

Third Prize:

• Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine

Submission details

Submissions open Monday, June 1 at 5:00pm ET (10:00pm BST) and close Tuesday, June 30 at 11:59pm ET.

• Genre: all genres welcome (unless otherwise specified)

• Word count: up to 1,000 words (no minimum)

• Eligibility: previously unpublished work only

• One submission per person per monthly contest

• Deadline: Tuesday, June 30 at 11:59pm ET

• AI policy: AI-assisted writing is not accepted

Winners will be contacted via Submittable, and winning pieces will be published by July 31, 2026.

How to submit

The monthly contest is open to paid Writers’ Hour Magazine subscribers and London Writers’ Salon members with complimentary paid access.

Finances a barrier? Request free entry to this month’s contest.

🔒 Paid Substack subscribers: read on to learn how to enter this month’s contest and access perks.

Submit to this month’s contest:

Read more

Use this prompt as an entry point into our May contest theme: Verb Your Enthusiasm.

📝 WEEKLY PROMPT

Write a piece where the body is central. Focus on verbs that stay close to the body and avoid generalities. Let the verbs place us inside the experience.

This weekly companion prompt is free and open to everyone. No submission required.

Keep reading for an editorial note and guidance from our guest judge, Sarah L. Kaufman.

Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team

A Note from Sarah L. Kaufman

“By describing a character’s movements with vivid verbs and tying these movements into larger themes, writers can draw readers deeper into their stories.” - Verb Your Enthusiasm

We crave a living connection with others. Nonverbal expression binds us powerfully with one another, in life as in stories. How a person takes up space and stirs the air: These physical actions reveal personality, self-regard, habits of mind. In this movement portrait, you might draw inspiration from people-watching. Perhaps there’s someone in your neighborhood who conveys joy in motion while walking the dog. Or a barista who slips into her maneuvers with grace. What does the lift of her breastbone tell us, or that stride that rolls like a jazz riff?

Dramatic actions may be easier to discern and describe. Think of left turns into wildness. A barefoot sashay over ruts and rocks. A surprise tumble over loose carpet and into the drinks tray.

This month’s contest and accompanying prompts are inspired by Sarah’s latest book, Verb Your Enthusiasm.

🎟️ Free Goal Setting Workshop This Week

Join us tomorrow Monday, June 1st, for Make June Your Month of Writing—a 1-hour goal-setting workshop for writers. RSVP here.

✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour

Work on this week’s prompt at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints. It’s the perfect environment to focus, share space with other writers, and make progress on your writing. Craving craft insights and a creative community? Explore Membership.

🔒 Enter the May Contest:

Paid subscribers and LWS members: Ready to submit your contest entry? Read more below.

If you’d like to enter this month, upgrade now—you’ll unlock the submission link instantly.

How to Enter the May Contest:

Read more about this month’s contest, or submit your entry now:

Read more

The longer I write, the more my hands look like Eloise’s. A friend of my mother, she was all turquoise jewelry against bronze skin. She traveled, her days in orbit around adobe buildings decked out in folk art. Family money, a guarantee of time, not talent. I don’t know if she was any good, even what she did really, but she was an artist. I could tell from her hands. They were veiny, twisted things that reminded me of trees. Then there was that gesture she made: hands clasped together at her heart, moving back and forth in a plea of some kind.

I recently found a ring from my childhood. It’s simple— sterling silver with flowers around the edge and a heart-shaped amethyst at its center. Is it childish? I think it might be childish. I found it in a definitely-childish Snoopy jewelry box that plays Swan Lake. It was hidden in the plastic base, nestled among the gears. The ring stopped fitting my chubby fingers when I was fourteen— around the time I lost myself.

Eloise is gone now. She didn’t survive being an artist. I’ve survived so far. Dumb luck, if you ask me, but if it ever comes down to a choice between me and my creative output, who am I gonna choose, you know? I put it on the other day, the ring. It fit. That’s when I noticed the tree bark color of my hands, their twisted shape a story. Like hers. I’ve been peeking in the mirror from time to time, hand to my lips: my own gesture signifying something I haven’t figured out yet. I like it. A mystery yet to be solved, an answer to seek, another reason to survive.

A Note From Our Guest Judge,

This piece really connected for me. An intriguing premise, a lively voice, vivid details, and an emotional journey in just three paragraphs: bravo.

About Claire Patton

Claire Patton grew up in Texas. As a child, she was left mostly on her own, running wild on the mean streets of the Dallas suburbs. Claire studied English at the University of Dallas. After a disastrous attempt at teaching, she attended a physical theater school overseas. Returning home afterwards, Claire bootstrapped indie theater productions, bringing original plays to festivals in the US and Canada. Now she lives in rural Colorado, where she works as a writer and screenplay consultant.

This piece was written in response to the theme How Artists Survive.

In front of his office building, over sunbreak, I ask 
my husband if he cares 
for the cultural nuances of his workplace.
He says no, handing me his corporate coffee, 
because his trade is not as loose as it needs 
the shaping of culture & narratives. 
I say, sipping from the coffee cup, 
your trade is not as refined 
as it allows them to be seen. 

I wonder if I have actually liked his corporate coffee. 
Knowing there is a reorg and I could 
lose the access any day, I worry.

But the coffee could have changed batch, brand, or roasters, 
I wouldn’t have tasted it.
I love my uncultured taste for its efficiency, its utility, 
its reach. I only want to be in the place 
coffee allows me to be
without paying 
for the price of entrance. 
Sun slips 

into a thundering 
that darkens the sky. My stomach craves 
the darkness, much like it craves 
the corporate coffee, like
only the essential can summon 
the superfluous, can strip
it back to water.
Rain breaks through—
 
a scattered slush storm 
the spring has never seen.
I dump the coffee down my throat, 
before it loses 
to the sweeping chill,
to the slush hammering 
the bulbing onions, 
the lanterned blueberries,
the scarlet claws of budding maple trees, 
along with their marcescent uncles 
misstepping their unwintered prime. 

The coffee bellows in my belly:

Why bite the hand that feeds you? 
To make it a better hand?
Who looks up the science 
in conscience?
Let’s not forget,
culture 
is the great grandson of dominance 
& to know the hand 
for what it is 
is a privilege— 
a child who has only known 
the plastic & the processed 
has no chance to know 
nature’s flowering, 
or to name the name 
from the soil it was named after. 
So look to the moneyed for names, 
and the rest for forgiveness.
Until you've come through the system that names you,
names are not 
what cracks you open.
The storm conjures away

its pattering of yesterday’s 
seeds & petals & leftover lyrics. 
The sky returns
to its even gray. 
The hand is still holding
the dark-rimmed cup,
coffee grounds settling 
in the slush-pileated meadow.

I ask if he feels nerves.
He says no, 
fingers tapping on the coffee cup,
but he could
use another sip 
before the thunder 
steals away his appetite. 

A Note From Our Guest Judge,

A poem of mischief, gumption, and celebration — a perfect match for its subject, that apprehensive, hopeful moment of leaving a job for something new and unknown.

About Xi Chen

Xi grew up in Tianjin, China and lives in the Pacific Northwest. She writes short-form fiction and poetry.

This piece was written in response to the theme How Artists Survive.

When the fuck-you fades
seek a pinhole through the shades.
Look through that opening.	
My love, your work here’s done
So take off. Go. Run!
	Propel your own blood pumping. 

Don’t return to locked position.
And all you’ve brought here to fruition?
	Send it your love
then trash it. Smash it if you crave release
or kiss it kindly on your knees.
	Kid, hand off the glove. 

The window glare reflects your wrinkle,
so cackle as you crinkle
	papers from an age-old pile.
Who needs this ancient bullshit crap, 
this chew-your-leg-off snap jaw trap
 spleen bursting with revile.

Spit bittered accumulation
laced with bright flash revelation.
	Smile, recall it from a distance,
distanced. Wipe off the sticky dribbled desk.
Gift all away, the teas the baskets. Risk
it. Trust me, dear one, with persistence.

You don’t belong, you’ve always known
your time here would be time on loan.
	You have come due. 
You. Yes, you. Yes, the door crack 
offers solace threats that tempt you back.
	But that’s the clue. 

Leaving tears, but fuck it, girl: 
now joy resides in you. 

A Note From Our Guest Judge,

I think we’ve all grappled with the moral conflicts at the heart of this poem, which very effectively captures the bitter lingering aftertaste of our late capitalist brew.

About Jacqueline Shea Murphy

Jacqueline Shea Murphy is the award-winning author of books on Native American modern dance history and on the dance-making of Indigenous artists, and is professor of Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside. She has survived as an artist by stepping away from attachment to her job and recognizing that joy comes not from outside affirmation but from one's creative practice (although she still wouldn't mind outside affirmation from an agent as her debut novel is in the querying process).

This piece was written in response to the theme How Artists Survive.

After Emm’s boss praises her PowerPoint, she’s buoyant until the event planner for “Let’s Roll for Refugees” corners her, at the coffee urn, with bonhomie and chocolate chip cookies.

“Springtime bike-a-thon. Everyone from your department’s coming. The basic only five k, Emm. Child’s play.”

Emm tugs her silk blouse so it won’t gather at her moist armpits, the practised smile fading as she scans the conference room. She remembers the same feeling of confinement, her classmates pedaling, the show-offs, the shrieks. Perfecting wheelies until makeup and boys replaced princess-pink bikes.

She replays her life coach’s advice. Develop a new mindset. Authenticity! Vulnerability! Her palms are slick. She teeters on the precipice of confession. Opening up builds connection. Trust. But she can’t. She can’t. Her colleague’s father likely never reprimanded her for playing outdoors. “Help your mother in the house!”

“Absolutely,” Emm nods.

After work she closes her eyes, soaping and lathering a make-believe version of herself. Sleek, toned. Muscular. A long-distance racer.

On LinkedIn she types: Hi, I’m 28 and never learned to ride. Am I too old?

The woman instructs complete beginners. Any age.

They meet on the first dry Saturday in April. The streets are quiet. Chilly, no flowering buds. A dog walker eyes his cell phone while his Labrador scratches and scrabbles the young grass, pisses against a tree. Bare-legged cyclists race alongside the Lachine Canal in black formfitting sportswear. Emm envies those sleeping in. Making love. Writing a grocery list. Sipping a coffee.

“Two fingers between the top and your eyebrows.” The instructor yanks on her helmet. “The 2-V-1 rule.” She yawns and reveals a molar filling before she slips an index finger beneath the strap. “See? Tugs firm.” She adjusts Emm’s lopsided helmet. Dooring, Emm learns, is when a car door ejects a cyclist headlong into traffic.

“Never forget your safety check!”

She tries to mimic the instructor’s motions. LinkedIn says she’s a retired high school teacher. Physics. Emm can see her at a whiteboard. Rigorous. Intense.

“Lean left. Your whole body. Tip the bike left. Turn the wheel left. TTT: tip then turn.” The woman closes in, left foot against Emm’s front wheel, left hand on the handlebar; the right grasps the saddle. “Sit.”

Lightheaded, Emm perches. She was advised to eat a hearty breakfast. Swallowed just a rye cracker.

“You aren’t going anywhere. You need the feeling.”

As if she’s atop Mount Everest, her shuddery, shallow breaths.

“I tip the bicycle left. What do you do?”

Emm doesn’t fall but her left foot finds the grass. She feels like a failure.

“You turn the wheel left, like we practised. Now, the right side… You got it!”

Her father never praised her.

Emm is directed to a slight slope. A little push from behind and the bike rolls Emm forward. She jumps off. “I’m not––”

“Trust how the bike works. TTT.”

Another push and the bike moves forward, the front wheel tips left. Emm cannot––she cannot force the wheel leftward while lurching lopsided.

The instructor points out an elderly cyclist. “She’s doing it. The invisible wobble. TTT.”

Sometimes Emm dismounts when the bike pitches forward; the pedals scrape her shins. Other times the bike flops and she hops gracelessly over metal and rubber.

They stop for a water break, Emm panting.

“Why do you want to learn?”

Not because everyone says how liberating it feels, airily speeding along. “I’ve a work thing fundraiser. The only one who can’t ride.”

“Do you feel it? How it wants to tip?”

“Yes.” If only she could pump her legs, her flailing, flagging legs.

“Did you enjoy sports as a kid?”

Both brothers played street hockey after supper. She’d stack and rinse, stack and rinse.

Her chest’s thumping. Not a healthy sign. She must quit. She’s wasting time and money. Nonetheless, she owes the instructor an answer.

She was always the last one picked for teams. She learned not to look up. Classmates would avert their eyes, her unenviable rank agitating their own anxiety. The fear of not belonging. She couldn’t throw the ball or kick. How often did she ask to stay home, sick?

“Right then. Push through it. I learned to ski after my kids were born.”

Opponents outran her. Teammates jostled her out the way. United against her, the brothers’ jeers.

“Scared of heights, me.”

One more try.

“Almost there!”

The morning of the bike-a-thon is the first time Emm really considers the refugees, how they cross continents south to north, east to west, survivors.

At the starting point she makes sure to ride last. Mounting the bike isn’t smooth but she remembers to look ahead. She wears kneepads. Gloves. Protective helmet, straps under the ears to the chin a snug V.

Razor-sharp air rushes past her, the speed upon the paved surface jolting her equilibrium as much as the haphazard, zigzagging and carefree children whose parents coast beside them. The dinging bells remind her of summery days. She’s a girl again. The children would appear from nowhere. They rode round and round. They imprisoned her, jangling their bells and prancing like ponies, pink streamers flouncing. An impenetrable chain.

Her right foot skitters off the pedal and she jerks, swerves towards a low flowering tree. How did she ever fancy herself gliding like a swan? She’s a chicken. A pecking stupid chicken. Should she brake? Drag her toes along the ground? What did her instructor tell her? Trust the bike! Trust the bike. TTT.

If she can recover the pedal, if she rebalances, she’ll steer towards the tree-lined bike path. It’s fragrant with deep pink magnolias. The stream of cyclists thins, vanishes around a bend. She rights herself. Feet swivel faster. Faster. She must––she has to catch up to the straggling cyclists, young and raucous, before they vanish. She girds herself. Anticipates the feeling. Closing in. Almost there. Carefree. No longer the outsider. Jubilant as her childhood jailers, if she reaches them.

About Valerie Free

Valerie Free’s poetry appears in CV2, her fiction in Wild Greens, Agnes and True, and in the anthology Short Stuff (Véhicule Press). How to Construct a Vivarium was published in the anthology, On Occasion: Poetry for the People (Coach House Press, May 2026). She lives in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal, which inspired her play Hiding in the House of Talents, about aging devotees losing their home. It received an Honourable Mention in Theatre BC’s 2023 Canadian Playwriting Competition.

This piece was written in response to the theme Time Travel.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant. - Emily Dickinson

Time, but make it slant—
like snow during the blizzard of 1993
as observed from my front porch in Kentucky;
The biggest snow my ten years on earth had ever seen.
Slant, like the arc of the second hand on my Dad's pocketwatch,
never permitted to eclipse the minute,
destined to reset to zero at every sixtieth second.
Except, in my Dad's case, his second hand started ticking
in January 1950 and his arc reset at sixty-six.
What's long for a minute, isn't quite so long for a life.
Slant, like the ash falling from my ex-lover's cigarette
in 2011 when he said he'd stay with friends
until I found a new place. Slant, like our promise
to keep in touch. Slant like papers, pencils,
folders spilling out of my backpack midway through second grade,
slanter still because that was my first day at a new school,
my backpack wasn't "cool" enough for 1989,
and was mocked by a girl named Mary.
The same Mary who later became one of my best friends.
Slant, like the path down the hill to the Elk River
where my brother, sisters, cousins and I swam away
the summers of the 80s and 90s, slanted even steeper
today because of the flood of 2016, or maybe its my memory
that slants because I haven't visited that place in over a decade.
Slant, like time, when you try to make sense of it.

About Emily Samples

Emily Samples is an Appalachian writer living in Kentucky. Her writing has appeared in Abridged, Still: The Journal, Lucent Dreaming, Capsule Stories, and elsewhere. She was born in West Virginia on the hottest day ever and is a distant relative of the Mothman.

This piece was written in response to the theme Time Travel.

Sophie has a daughter. Her name is Alice. She is named for a relative on her husband’s side of the family who survived the Holocaust. The story comes and goes, changing bits and pieces, details arriving and departing, but the gist of it is that Alice, the elder, who survived the Holocaust, survived it by cunning and bravery, and the strength to not falter on long, wintry marches. Whatever stories Sophie had heard about the Holocaust, they all melded together inside her head and became Alice’s story. Rotten potatoes, boots that didn’t fit, starvation, the camps with malaria and exhaustion and everywhere the stench of death—all of it was Alice’s story, too. The part that was Alice’s alone was the very last part, where she fell in love with a sixty-pound man whom she later married. The sixty-pound man was already dead when Alice first laid eyes on him. He was on a gurney in a hallway in a hospital somewhere in Europe, and Alice was washing his sixty-pound body, when he opened his eyes and looked at her. At that moment, she was washing his privates—this part Sophie added on her own, but really, why else would a dead man open his eyes unless suddenly, after years and years of starvation and gruesomeness and lack of true human contact because there were no humans left, only walking corpses, suddenly a woman is gently lifting his penis with a cool washrag and wiping him clean? He opened his eyes and looked at her. Was she shocked? She wasn’t. She’d seen too much to not believe that a dead man can open his eyes. She looked back at the sixty-pound man and in that instant, they fell in love.

Hence, Sophie’s husband was born in the United States of America, because Alice and the sixty-pound man came to the United States and brought the few pieces of family they could find along with them and then babies were born and families created. Sophie’s husband, Frank, was created in the back seat of a car, forcing his two young parents to pledge their troth, one to the other, long before love came into the picture. Whatever.

Frank was born.

Frank married Sophie.

Sophie and Frank have a daughter, Alice, named after the other Alice who woke a dead man by wiping his penis with a cool cloth. Life is funny that way.

When the other Alice died, all of the stories of her life, which had hung about her shoulders like the warm coat she’d never had on the long marches through the wintry forests in ill-fitting boots—all of her stories flew directly upward toward the ceiling in the room where she lay dead on the bed, made dips and circles and turns in one last lovely, youthful, confident dance, and then vanished in one silent burst into thin air. Poof! All of it gone, forever.

(One minute here, the next minute, gone. And if no one really listened, well, too bad. Good stories, bad stories, true ones, false ones, modified versions, spiffed up ones, none of them stick around to see how later they will be told. Stories are owned by the ones who tell them, and once the teller is dead, they belong to anyone.)

About Mary Guterson

Mary Guterson's published work includes novels, short stories, poems, articles, book reviews and radio commentaries. She lives in Los Angeles.

This piece was written in response to the theme Time Travel.

Use this prompt as an entry point into our May contest theme: Verb Your Enthusiasm.

📝 WEEKLY PROMPT

Write a moment of strong emotion without naming it. Show it through action—how someone moves, reacts, or holds themselves.

This weekly companion prompt is free and open to everyone. No submission required.

Keep reading for an editorial note and guidance from our guest judge, Sarah L. Kaufman.

Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team

A Note from Sarah L. Kaufman

“Let the body talk: Physical action reveals the feels. Suggest the ineffable through your characters’ behavior.” –Verb Your Enthusiasm

I can tell a good bit about my partner’s emotions by the way he clasps his forearms. We—all of us—read one another’s body language more closely than perhaps we realize. How a person behaves, how their body responds—these cues spark our empathy, leading us to feel what’s unspoken.

On the page, evocative verbs can point to hidden thoughts and feelings and light the same empathetic impulse in your readers. Even the tiniest tell of sensation invites readers to experience one of the great pleasures of reading: filling in the picture with your own inner life.

The emotional actions you describe may be as large as a bear hug or as small as a stumbling heartbeat. You might write about external physical signs or take us deep inside the body, where tumult inflames the organs. Metaphors are your friends here; they may sharpen the feeling.

This month’s contest and accompanying prompts are inspired by Sarah’s latest book, Verb Your Enthusiasm.

✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour

Work on this week’s prompt at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints. It’s the perfect environment to focus, share space with other writers, and make progress on your writing. Craving craft insights and a creative community? Explore Membership.

🔒 Enter the May Contest:

Paid subscribers and LWS members: Ready to submit your contest entry? Read more below.

If you’d like to enter this month, upgrade now—you’ll unlock the submission link instantly.

How to Enter the May Contest:

Read more about this month’s contest, or submit your entry now:

Read more

Use this prompt as an entry point into our May contest theme: Verb Your Enthusiasm.

📝 WEEKLY PROMPT

Write a scene (any genre, up to 1,000 words) where the world feels alive through verb-driven metaphors. Include at least three verb-driven metaphors in your piece.

This weekly companion prompt is free and open to everyone. No submission required.

Keep reading for an editorial note and guidance from our guest judge, Sarah L. Kaufman.

Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team

A Note from Sarah L. Kaufman

“Metaphors do more than illustrate. With a strong subject and verb they can turn abstract concepts into fleshy, vigorous things we see and feel.” –Verb Your Enthusiasm

The metaphorical actions of the natural world can foreshadow events and heighten your story’s theme. Lively verbs can help you intensify the spirit of a scene; you might think of setting specific elements in motion, and imbuing them with drama. If a garden party is about to turn tragic, for example, hellebores that shiver or willows that whip in the wind can hint at danger and build suspense.

The more specific the verbs and other details are, the more your readers can see, smell and feel your setting. We have such a rich treasury of verbs in the English language, which gives us endless ways to convey subtle shades of mood and manner in even the smallest actions. A wet evening takes on richness and character when verbs describe the play of moonlight and mist. Choose positive or negative verbs depending on the tone you wish to strike and what your imagination calls forth.

This month’s contest and accompanying prompts are inspired by Sarah’s latest book, Verb Your Enthusiasm.

✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour

Work on this week’s prompt at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints. It’s the perfect environment to focus, share space with other writers, and make progress on your writing. Craving craft insights and a creative community? Explore Membership.

🔒 Enter the May Contest:

Paid subscribers and LWS members: Ready to submit your contest entry? Read more below.

If you’d like to enter this month, upgrade now—you’ll unlock the submission link instantly.

How to Enter the May Contest:

Read more about this month’s contest, or submit your entry now:

Read more

Use this prompt as an entry point into our May contest theme: Verb Your Enthusiasm.

📝 WEEKLY PROMPT

Take a noun—any noun—and turn it into a verb. Write a piece where that word becomes an action, using it more than once so its meaning becomes clear through context.

This weekly companion prompt is free and open to everyone. No submission required.

If you’re writing toward the May contest, consider this prompt one entry point into the theme.

Keep reading for news and announcements.

Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team

A Note from Sarah L. Kaufman

“Linguists call this age-­old process of turning nouns into verbs ‘denominalizing,’ that is, making a noun a not-­noun. I prefer to call it verbing.” –Verb Your Enthusiasm

I recall a time when brides everywhere sought to Carolyn Bessette their look with undone hair and a satin sheath. Verbing a name—in this case, the chic wife of John F. Kennedy Jr.—fits into our longstanding language tradition of flipping nouns into verbs. Every day, we use hundreds of these verbs-formerly-known-as-nouns, when we Google and DM, or label a package, spice a stew, diaper a baby, and so on. Some of these innovative verbs spring from objects, others from technology, still more from people’s names. (“Boycott” is one.)

Do you, perhaps, have a nosy neighbor who fruit-baskets newcomers just so she can peer into their sitting rooms? I don’t either, but it seems plausible. With this prompt, let your imagination run. See what surprise verbs leap from the margins.

This month’s contest and accompanying prompts are inspired by Sarah’s latest book, Verb Your Enthusiasm.

✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour

Work on this week’s prompt at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints. It’s the perfect environment to focus, share space with other writers, and make progress on your writing. Craving craft insights and a creative community? Explore Membership.

🔒 Enter the May Contest:

Paid subscribers and LWS members: Ready to submit your contest entry? Read more below.

If you’d like to enter this month, upgrade now—you’ll unlock the submission link instantly.

How to Enter the May Contest:

Read more about this month’s contest, or submit your entry now:

Read more

Use this prompt as an entry point into our May contest theme: Verb Your Enthusiasm.

📝 WEEKLY PROMPT

Begin with a short piece—an essay, a scene, or poem (up to 1,000 words, any genre). Replace the central verbs with unexpected choices. Let the new verbs reshape the writing: how it moves, how it feels, and what it means.

This weekly companion prompt is free and open to everyone. No submission required.

If you’re writing toward the May contest, consider this prompt one entry point into the theme.

Keep reading for news and announcements.

Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team

A Note from Sarah L. Kaufman

"Precise, dynamic verbs bring stories to life..." –Verb Your Enthusiasm

F. Scott Fitzgerald closes his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, with this line: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” What does it mean? To me, it’s something like this: We’re caught in an existential loop, we dreamy, misdirected humans. We struggle through life, hopeful of a fine future, yet we undermine ourselves by circling back to the past.

How do you feel when you read the last sentence of his novel? Perhaps the verb phrase “beat on” echoes inside you, as the soft echo of a drumbeat, or your own heart. “Borne back” has a light, sweeping sense; I think of blossoms borne on the wind or the transporting action of a spiritual presence. If we were to swap humdrum verbs for “beat on” and “borne back,” the warmth and tenderness fade. For example: So we carry on, boats against the current, sent back ceaselessly into the past. Roughly the same idea, but tuneless.

In your writing, play around with verbs that move beyond predictable possibilities. Might you find verbs here and there that suggest a specific mood, image or tone, in keeping with your purpose? Try this where you feel it makes sense; allow for the natural flow of your writing, without complicating it. The goal is to deepen your meaning.

This month’s contest and accompanying prompts are inspired by Sarah’s latest book, Verb Your Enthusiasm.

✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour

Work on this week’s prompt at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints. It’s the perfect environment to focus, share space with other writers, and make progress on your writing. Craving craft insights and a creative community? Explore Membership.

🪶 Applications Closing - The Manuscript Accelerator

In the middle of a book-length project and want to finish your first (or next) draft by summer? A few spaces remain for our 10-Week Manuscript Accelerator – Virtual Residency. Applications close Monday, May 4th.

🔒 Enter the May Contest:

Paid subscribers and LWS members: Ready to submit your contest entry? Read more below.

If you’d like to enter this month, upgrade now—you’ll unlock the submission link instantly.

How to Enter the May Contest:

Read more about this month’s contest , or submit your entry now:

Read more

This month’s contest and companion prompts are inspired by and in conversation with Verb Your Enthusiasm by Sarah L. Kaufman, published in the UK by Particular Books.

MAY CONTEST THEME:

Verb Your Enthusiasm

Write a poem, essay, or story in which verbs take center stage. Let them drive the action, carry the feeling, or shape the world of the piece.

Submission details, deadline, and FAQs are below.

Meet Our Guest Judge: Sarah L. Kaufman

Sarah L. Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, an award-winning author and a writing teacher. As the Washington Post’s chief dance critic she wrote about the arts, entertainment, and society for 27 years. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Review of Books and Boston Globe, among others. Her debut book, The Art of Grace, was a 2015 Washington Post Notable Book and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award and a Spirituality & Practice Award. A 2024 Penn State Foster-Foreman Distinguished Writer, Sarah has taught at Harvard, American University, the National Critics Institute and Princeton, where she was a McGraw Professor of Writing. She has received journalism fellowships from the Nieman Foundation and French-American Foundation. Sarah and her husband have three children and live in Asheville, North Carolina.

This month’s contest and accompanying prompts are inspired by Sarah’s latest book, Verb Your Enthusiasm, published in the UK by Particular Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Available for purchase in the UK here and in the US here.

A Note from Our Editorial Team

For this month’s contest, let verbs lead.

Each week, Sarah F. Kaufman joins us with a short craft note drawn from her book Verb Your Enthusiasm, opening up new ways to use verbs with force and precision.

Follow those invitations onto the page and watch what shifts.

Read more about the contest and submit your entry.

NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

🎨 May 2026 at London Writers’ Salon

Explore what’s happening at LWS this month: live conversations with , Missouri Williams, and Chris Pavone, plus Agent/Editor Hours, workshops, & a session on overcoming limiting beliefs with . Read the full May lineup here.

🎯 Workshop Replay: May 2026 Goal Setting

If you missed the live session—or want to revisit your plan—this workshop is designed to help you set a clear path for your writing this month. Catch the free replay here.

✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour

Work on your contest submission at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints.

Craving more craft insights and a creative community? Learn about Membership.

Congratulations to the winners of What If!

We are thrilled to share the contest results for March 2026. Special thanks once again to our guest judge, .

• First Place: Hold Still by Amanda Fales

• Second Place: What if the Coin Never Lands by Violeta Bermudez

• Third Place: The Garden by Ali Mckenzie-Murdoch

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who participated. It’s a pleasure to share these pieces with you, and we can’t wait to see what you create in the next contest!

Contest info

The winning entries will receive:

First Prize:

• $135 USD (£100 GBP)

• Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine

• 3-months of London Writers’ Salon Silver Membership (£99 value)

• Commemorative Writers’ Hour trophy mug (priceless)

Second Prize:

• Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine

• 1-month of London Writers’ Salon Silver Membership (£37 value)

Third Prize:

• Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine

Submission details

Submissions open Friday, May 1 at 5:00pm ET (10:00pm BST) and close Sunday, May 31 at 11:59pm ET.

• Genre: all genres welcome (unless otherwise specified)

• Word count: up to 1,000 words (no minimum)

• Eligibility: previously unpublished work only

• One submission per person per monthly contest

• Deadline: Sunday, May 31 at 11:59pm ET

• AI policy: AI-assisted writing is not accepted

Winners will be contacted via Submittable, and winning pieces will be published by June 31, 2026.

How to submit

The monthly contest is open to paid Writers’ Hour Magazine subscribers and London Writers’ Salon members with complimentary paid access.

Finances a barrier? Request free entry to this month’s contest.

🔒 Paid Substack subscribers: read on to learn how to enter this month’s contest and access perks.

Submit to this month’s contest:

Read more

In another life, her mother drives to her family home in the fall of 1982. She is twenty-three. She packs one suitcase while her husband is at work. She does not yet know that Sarah is possible.

*****

Sarah is seven when she comes in with her knee bleeding from a bike fall in the gravel and her face already crumpling. The kitchen smells like lemon pine. Pale green herb wallpaper— rosemary and thyme and sage—covers the walls. Sarah knows it by heart. She has traced every sprig with her eyes during hours of time-outs spent facing that wall, standing still until her mother decided she could move. Her mother’s checkbook and a stack of bills are spread across the old wooden table.

Her mother doesn’t look up right away. When she does, she sighs and says, “This is what you get for going too fast,” and moves the bills aside to clear a workspace. She drags Sarah to stand beside the table, finds the first aid kit under the sink, and kneels.

She doesn’t look at Sarah’s face. She looks at the scrape, brow furrowed, tilting the knee toward the light, and gets to work. She pours the peroxide. It foams white against the raw skin. Sarah whimpers and her mother says, “Hold still.” She reaches for the gauze and knocks the coffee mug with her elbow and snaps, “See, this is why I—” and doesn’t finish.

The whole thing takes less than three minutes. Her mother could clean, disinfect, and bandage a wound before Sarah’s tears had dried. She was good at fixing things you could see.

*****

Sarah is thirty-one and chopping onions for a new recipe she found online when her father calls. She knows from the looseness in his voice that he’s had a couple of beers, maybe three. Not drunk. Just talkative. He’s telling the story of his marriage again, the version where everything happened to him.

She holds the phone between her shoulder and ear and keeps chopping.

“She was going to leave, you know,” he says. “Before you. Going to go back to her mother’s. We’d been unhappy for a long time by then.” He pauses to take a sip. “And then she found out she was pregnant and that was that. I told her it wasn’t a good time. I didn’t want a kid. But you know how your mother gets when she decides something.”

Sarah’s knife stops.

He keeps talking. Something about how he tried to make it work, how nobody gives him credit. His voice is flat, informational—the same tone he’d use to explain why a job hadn’t panned out, why they needed to move again. He doesn’t register what he’s said. He has never, in his life, felt the weight of what he hands people.

Sarah says, “I see.”

She is staring at a chip in the countertop she has never noticed before. A pale rough divot, small enough to miss for years. The oven fan is deafening. Her jaw is clenched.

He says, “Well, anyway,” and moves on to something about his truck, and after a while she hangs up and stands in the kitchen. The doorway behind her darkens—her partner, reading the silence. She doesn’t turn around.

*****

Sarah is twelve. Her mother is driving home from the general store, the old one with the soda fountain counter and the post office in the back. Sarah has a vanilla Coke sweating in her hand, the ice still rattling.

Her mother has been fighting with her father again. Sarah doesn’t know about what. She never knows about what. But the silence in the car has a tension she recognizes: her mother’s hands tight on the wheel, her mouth set, driving slightly too fast.

“Always have your own bank account,” her mother says to the windshield. “Before you get married, before you do anything. You make sure you have money that’s yours. Money he can’t touch.”

Sarah sips her Coke. “Okay, Mom.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

But she doesn’t. She is twelve and the vanilla is still sweet on her tongue and she thinks her mom is just blowing off steam after this fight, whatever adult argument that is making the car feel too small. She looks out the window and waits for it to be over.

*****

Her mother’s apartment is beige. White carpet, bare walls, a window with vertical blinds half-tilted against the afternoon sun. After years of living in old houses with character—the Victorian with the crumbling porch, the ranch with soda pop orange kitchen tile, dated wallpaper in every room—her mother has chosen a place with nothing in it.

She is smaller than Sarah remembers. Not frail, but almost condensed with the sharp edges worn down by time or solitude or both. She makes coffee without asking if Sarah wants any and sets the mug down on a counter that is completely, immaculately bare.

“I have something for you,” she says, and goes into the bedroom. She comes back with a wool coat, dark green. “Doesn’t fit me anymore. It’s still perfectly good. You might as well take it.”

Sarah holds it. The wool is soft and slightly pilled at the cuffs. She presses it to her face before she means to, looking for lemon pine, for rosemary, for anything—but it just smells like a closet. Like something folded and kept in the dark for a long time.

Her mother is already turned away, wiping the counter down even though there’s nothing on it. Her back is very straight. She is taking care of things the way she has always taken care of things, with her hands busy and her eyes on the task.

Sarah puts the coat on. It fits.

In another life, it fits a younger woman with a suitcase and no daughter. But in this one, Sarah is already zipping it closed.

A Note From Our Guest Judge, Hanna Thomas Uose

The author captured so much life and rich detail in this short story, as well as how the consequences of one decision can reverberate down through the generations. Poignant.

About Amanda Fales

Amanda Fales is a design researcher based in Oakland, California. She studies human behavior for a living and is endlessly interested in family dynamics — why people do what they do, and what they tell themselves about it later. She lives with her partner Ryan and their dog Goose, who is the best of us.

This piece was written in response to the theme What If.

In one of the grades at one of the schools in one of the countries I’ve lived in, one of my teachers tried to get me to care about math. He said to forget the graphs and the triangles, to think instead about how the world runs on a set of simple, unbreakable rules; and that once I found something worth questioning, I would be interested in finding the answer. As if… Frankly, I do not care for the rules of mathematics; I never have.

And yet, I’ve been thinking about the theory of probability an awful lot lately.

This theory suggests that the probability of a coin landing on either heads or tails is one. The probability that it lands on neither is zero. Simple. The latter would be what mathematicians call an impossible outcome. To some, this offers comfort. But the more I think about it, the dizzier I get. It means that I either met you or I didn’t. If I hadn’t met you, I never would have loved you.

Now that is a comforting thought.

But the truth is that decisions open up portals, and I just happened to step into the one in which we met on the second floor of a dimly lit dive bar when I wasn’t supposed to be there. Earlier that night, my boyfriend—you know which one!—said he needed to be single his senior year and broke up with me via text. Classy. When I called my friend, she said, “I’ll pick you up in 20.” And with the turn of a doorknob, there we were, you and I, chugging a rum and Coke after scooping the ice out of the glass with dirty hands.

One thing led to another, and by the time I realized what I’d gotten myself into, it was too late. I had given you something that I couldn’t get back. One heartbreak led to an even worse one. Ain’t that funny?

So it stands to reason that I’d be better off had I never met you, or at least had I been able to pluck your memory out of my brain. I tried that once, a spell that—among other things, involved writing your name on a piece of paper and burning it away on New Year’s Eve. It didn’t work, obviously, and now my cousin brings it up every New Year’s Eve we spend together. We laugh, but deep down, I daydream of that parallel universe in which it did work.

Unfortunately for me, in this one, it backfired because you started haunting my dreams, appearing as a ghost, your voice echoing like waves crashing, and I’d wake up startled, with the idiotic hope that it was your name that lit up my phone at 3 AM.

So alas! Yes! Of course, I’ve fantasized about the version of me who never knew you. Statistically, they must exist. I think of her sometimes, but something strange happens; this version of me that never knew you… I don’t like her. I find her boring, she takes no chances and keeps that big old bruised heart of hers locked up in a tiny glass cage—how boring! I don’t think you’d like her either. After all, you liked me.

I reason then, in all my unreasonableness, that removing you is not the clean subtraction I’d like to think it is.

It’s a system collapse.

So I arrive, rather reluctantly, at the conclusion that in the mathematics of my universe, you must exist. You are—inconveniently—a necessary condition. The math’s not quite as simple anymore.

I return to the coin and consider a magical, third possibility instead: what if the coin never lands?

I imagine it suspended mid-air, spinning endlessly. All the what ifs in the palm of my hand, as I swat away like annoying summer bugs, every probability in which I did not meet you. There’s only me that exists before and after knowing you, but never inside the heartbreak of never knowing you at all. So that in every world, every dream, every parallel universe, the probability of me knowing you is one. The probability that I never do is zero. A universe in which our paths never cross? an impossible outcome.

It’s you and me, scooping the ice out of a rum and Coke on the second floor of a dimly lit dive bar. Kissing in the same old corner, near the stairs where they sold the sandwiches. Even knowing how it ends, if the coin must land, I hope it lands on the probability of loving you.

A Note From Our Guest Judge, Hanna Thomas Uose

I loved how this story engaged with the prompt of ‘What If’ and the mathematics of probability, before finally landing on an answer. Sometimes we can only entertain one outcome as it is too hard to imagine another.

About Violeta Bermudez

Violeta is a Nicaraguan writer based in Washington, D.C. She's working on her first novel.

This piece was written in response to the theme What If.

Standing naked before Monet’s Water Lilies, a pallid mauve light shimmers around Madame Liu. Her upper arms sag in folded wings, but her behind, still pert, is a lily bud. I swipe her image—seventy-year-old Chinese, recently widowed—but it resists, ghosting the glass.

*

“Where to?” I joked when we first met, awkward before her glamour in my lab coat.

“Through the painting to Giverny,” she said. “My husband adored the gardens. Maybe I can find him there.”

I offered my condolences. Then I warned her of the risks. Teleportation worked with puffer fish and Komodo dragons. Chimps? They never returned. Only silence. And once, a tuft of fur. Humans? That was untested.

*

When the time came, she stared straight ahead, her once-ebony locks twisted into an off-centre chignon.

“I used to immerse myself in this painting as a child,” she whispered. “Sometimes it felt impossible to come back.”

She loosened her hair. Sleek strands cascaded over her shoulders, releasing the scent of sandalwood—the scent of some forgotten place.

Rigid before the canvas, her hands clenched. A ripple passed through her. A buttock twitched, as if the lilies had stirred. My chest tightened. I wished I could step in after her.

*

The space where Madame Liu vanished still reverberates. Her atoms caught in the warp and weft of the canvas—trapped between linseed oil, viridian, French ultramarine.

Blush-coloured light dapples the white laboratory walls. I bring her image back onto the screen. The reflection of the sky in the lily pond tilts everything upside down. I zoom in. Beneath the lilies, through chalky coral and emerald, threads of linen emerge.

A pulse. Caught mid-bloom.

Warmth.

A flicker.

A Note From Our Guest Judge, Hanna Thomas Uose

A story about a portal, which itself reads as a portal into another world. I loved the central question of this story: what if we could step through a painting?

About Ali Mckenzie-Murdoch

Ali Mckenzie-Murdoch (UK) lives in Zürich, Switzerland. Her work appears in X-R-A-Y Literary, Fractured Lit, Your Impossible Voice, JMWW, Ilanot Review, Litro, Gone Lawn, Bending Genres, LEON Literary Review, and more. She is a Fractured Lit Flash Open Contest Finalist. Nominee for Best Small Fiction 2025 & Best Micro Fiction 2025. Shortlisted for Bath Flash Fiction Award 2025.

This piece was written in response to the theme What If.

Use this prompt as an entry point into our April contest theme: How Artists Survive.

📝 WEEKLY PROMPT

Write about a piece of art created under specific limits—time, money, space, secrecy, obligation.

This weekly companion prompt is free and open to everyone. No submission required.

If you’re writing toward the April contest, consider this prompt one entry point into the theme.

Keep reading for news and announcements.

Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team

A Note from

I think so many of us feel frustrated about not having enough time or money to do our creative work in the way we would ideally like. But, truthfully, it’s often better to have limited options—it focuses the mind and creates a sense of urgency that can be really good for the work. I love it when I can see that a writer or artist has come up with a creative solution to a constraint in their lives—and for many of us money is the ultimate constraint.

This month’s contest and accompanying prompts are inspired by Mason’s latest book, Making Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life.

NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

🎟️ Free Goal Setting Workshop This Week

Join us on Thursday, April 30th, for Make May Your Month of Writing—a 1-hour goal-setting workshop for writers. RSVP here.

✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour

Work on this week’s prompt at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints. It’s the perfect environment to focus, share space with other writers, and make progress on your writing. Craving craft insights and a creative community? Explore Membership.

🪶 Last Call: The Manuscript Accelerator

Are you in the middle of a book-length project and want to finish your first (or next) draft by this Summer? A few spaces remain for our 10-Week Manuscript Accelerator – Virtual Residency. Apply now.

🔒 Enter the April Contest:

Paid subscribers and LWS members: Ready to submit your contest entry? Read more below.

If you’d like to enter this month, upgrade now—you’ll unlock the submission link instantly.

How to Enter the April Contest:

Read more about this month’s contest, or submit your entry now:

Read more

Welcome to our pop-up 24-Hour Writing Contest at Writers’ Hour Magazine!

This 24-hour challenge invites you to work with time creatively, moving across it in ways that feel fresh and unexpected.

Work on your entry alongside thousands of writers at our ✍️🌏 24-Hour Writing Sprint, kicking off today, Friday April 24th at 7pm BST / 2pm ET / 11am PT. Join us for 1, 2, or all 24 hours. (It’s free!) 👉 RSVP here.

✍️ 24-HOUR WRITING CONTEST

Prompt: Time Travel

Write a piece that uses time in a surprising way. This could be a sudden shift, reversal, doubling, or a layering of moments.

Unpublished pieces of 1,000 words or less in any genre are eligible for this contest.

Submissions are open for the next 24 hours only and are due by Saturday, April 25th at 7pm BST / 2pm ET / 11am PT. Submit and details below.

Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team

A Note from Our Editorial Team

There are many ways into this prompt. Time doesn’t have to behave linearly here; it can echo, overlap, or arrive out of order. What matters is that the movement feels deliberate, even if it isn’t explained.

As you explore, stay attentive to what is actually happening on the page. Concrete detail will keep the reader oriented, even as the chronology loosens. Let the piece discover its own time-logic, and follow where it leads.

Contest info

The winning entries will receive:

First Prize:

• $135 USD (£100 GBP)

• Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine

• 3-months of London Writers’ Salon Silver Membership (£99 value)

• Commemorative Writers’ Hour trophy mug (priceless)

Second Prize:

• Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine

• 1-month of London Writers’ Salon Silver Membership (£37 value)

Third Prize:

• Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine

Submission details

Submissions open Friday, April 24 at 2:00pm ET (7:00pm BST) and close Saturday April 25 at 2:00pm ET (7:00pm BST)

• Genre: all genres welcome (unless otherwise specified)

• Word count: up to 1,000 words (no minimum)

• Eligibility: previously unpublished work only

• One submission per person per monthly contest

• Deadline: Saturday April 25 at 2:00pm ET / 7:00pm BST

• AI policy: AI-generated work will not be accepted

Winners will be contacted via Submittable, and winning pieces will be published by May 31, 2026.

How to submit

The monthly contest is open to all free and paid Writers’ Hour Magazine subscribers and London Writers’ Salon members.

Submit via Submittable

A big thank you to our supporters!

🌍✍️ Join our 24-Hour Writing Sprint! April 24-25

Work on your submission alongside Amie McNee, Mason Currey, Steven Pressfield, Nir Eyal, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Olivia Petter, Natalie Lue, Holly Ringland, Svetlana Litvinchuk (Sub Club / ONLY POEMS DAILY), Randy Winston (The Black List), Anna C Wilson, Joanna Nadin, Rachel Khoo, Deepa Paul and thousands of other writers in our 24-Hour Writing Sprint.

🗓️ Kickoff: April 24 2026, 7pm BST / 2pm ET / 11am PT.
👉 RSVP to join. (Free to attend)