United States
Lora Durance writes and climbs rocks in Tucson, Arizona, where she earned an MFA in Fiction from the University of Arizona while reading slush for a local literary agency. She's a member of the Tucson Author Alliance, the Bi+ Book Gang, the Climbing Association of Southern Arizona, and Climbing in Color. Her passion is to tell emotionally impactful stories that inspire curiosity and drive action. She is currently penning a planned slow-burn fantasy, Savage Stars, that flows from her lived experience with covert abuse and CPTSD, and from the eLearnings she authors through Guard Tree Publishing training CPS caseworkers, DV advocates, and family court professionals.
She likes: prickly and soft things, rocks and climbing on them, people and connecting to them, coherence and moving through the messy middle, ancient trees, milk in steam or cream form, and tiny ferns because they are old and slow to evolve and so must be very wise.
For three years, no winter came to the pine forest. The boy was not expecting that, but he had not expected to fall through the glass globe, either, with his fingers outstretched, palms pressed against the cramped, concave terminus of his world.
Stories from the Drylands II: A Southern Arizona Climbing Anthology memorializes this time in climbing history for one pocket of a diverse and dynamic community. The collection gives voice to the myriad reasons that individuals of all skill levels, ages, genders, backgrounds, and socio-economic statuses come to rock climbing.
Black Dandy #1, featuring: George Salis, Charles Wilkinson, Guinotte Wise, Lora Rivera, Mason Boyles, Ed Hagelstein, Max Devoe Talley, Emily Linstrom, Eddie Jeffrey, Andrea J. Orton
All genres are created equal.
The jacket is the first thing to go. Turn on the heat, and a good hard hike up two flights of stairs to the classroom makes for two blushed cheeks, and spreading arms pull off the coat—a gift from a love so long ago now you cannot remember whether they preferred you make tea or coffee in the morning...
You are standing where an earthen vessel shattered and became the land once dissolved in hungry tongues of basalt grown still red-black boils roil and burst and freeze holding form the trajectory of long ago volcanic force. But not so long ago if you listen.
Mysterious machines, mangy coyotes, mad professors, murder sprees, bacterial puppet-masters, Clara Bow, Bettie Page, Bloody Mary, cool devils, cheerleaders from Hell, the ghost of James Joyce, sexual prayers: FLAPPERHOUSE X
Last night, while you slept, steam still curling from the teacup on your nightstand, we moved in the stillness that had descended upon the trail.
She stands in the grove, in the pecan tree's shadow, looks up - there the nest and there the silent crow. A slice of the first quarter moon sifts through black branches. And above, through the bruisy blue, through those gray and yellow cliffs and caves of clouds: moonslip and sink and sunder.
I never pass through Oak Ridge without visiting the old house. I invent excuses, hairdresser and nail appointments, implausible runs to the grocery store. I point to yard sale signs in nearby neighborhoods from which I can steal away on foot, or I grope in my purse for wads of bills and push them at my two children.
a web & print magazine of magic realism & slipstream
Voiceover / Audio Narration
Three stories, each in 66 words exactly. Endless possibilities. Graduation, Adriana, and First Contact.
Five stories, each in 66 words exactly. Endless possibilities.
