Please pardon us for snitching the title of William Faulkner’s momentous novel about race relations in the 1930s South, but it’s on our minds a lot as we continue to see ugly racism rampant in our country. Which, of course, begs the question posed in the gorgeous song, “Why Can’t We Live Together“, performed by Diana King and Kyle Eastwood. We hope you’ll find interesting and provocative aspects of what’s good about a diverse culture in our offerings this month. That’s about it, save for the more obvious metaphor of our contributors shedding some light into your own personal August with our bountiful creative offerings. Fiction. Sandor Blum has given us a short story about an American Jew who encounters latent – and perhaps blatant – discrimination in “My Last Night in Paris.” We also…

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Hi all! Just a quick note about our fabulous writing contest. We’ve had a lot of emails in the past few days, all of which run along the same basic theme: Dear (somebody) I really want to submit a story, but it’s not perfect yet. Can I please have a few extra days to finish it up? Thanks (somebody) We’re not monsters. We get that sometimes art takes a little longer than expected. Because of this, we’re rolling the whole contest forward a month or so.   As of right now, the deadline to submit stories to our contest is Friday, August 18th. After that, we’re going to be monsters. At 0001 on the 19th, submissions are closed forever. You have an extra month. Show us what you can do with it.    

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It’s a busy time at the Fictional Café, but what else is new? Even though summer is only a few weeks old for us, here in the northern hemisphere, it already seems like it’s been an endless summer. No not that kind. We’re pumping out so much Fresh Java, we can hardly keep up! We hope you can, though. In addition to our European Penpals series, we’re sharing the great work of some folks in the industry at Dead Darlings and Authors Publish (stay tuned for this one).  We are even celebrating the genesis of our first ever Fictional Café Print Edition! We’re so excited to get our members’ work in people’s actual hands this winter. Of course, in addition to all this Café fare, we have the monthly work of our amazing creative members….

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