BY ALYZA TAGUILASO. 0 begins with an explosion. / 1 My great-great-grandparents were making love when the First World War decided to happen.

BY AI JIANG. I hated my name until the end of high school, especially during my kindergarten and elementary school years.

BY KWAN ANN TAN. This is a romance. A messenger rides against a backdrop / of moonlit sand on an Arabian steed.

BY ISA LORENZO. There was a girl who loved to play in a field.

BY ANNA TERESA SLATER. I want / the old man on the unicycle to listen / to my prayers.

Six years have passed since you last read a physical book.

my father was thirty-five when my mother / had me.

BY YVANNA VIEN TICA. Voice held / inside like a panic. / I could never erase / myself from the narrative.

BY JULIENNE MAUI CASTELO MANGAWANG. In a woman’s hands did I meet God branching into ancestors who sang beneath trees, sat among waterfalls

BY DAMHURI MUHAMMAD. That valley is the most secret place.