Shannon Connor Winward

What You Learn Coming To:

—Charcoal tastes like punishment
doled out by nurses with no patience.
—You remember nothing but dreams first
tests for which you are unprepared
and other things you have failed at.
—You wake up slowly inside your own skull
and then the narrowness of hospital
curtains, and then, oh right, you again.  
—Even after the tape marks wash off, and the
needle blooms, you will shit black
for days.

[Image Description: The author is centrally-featured in a whitewashed photo nearly devoid of color except for spikes of auburn hair, a hint of blue eyes, a pink almost-smile and a red-polished thumb resting on the author's chin (much like an artist surveying their work). The thumb sports a clunky silver ring which, upon closer inspection, reveals itself to be an owl perched upside-down. Abstract lines suggest a shoulder, a plunging neckline, the chain of a necklace, a freckled hand, and the cuff of a sleeve; also, the lines of a face content to gaze directly at the viewer, even as the viewer gazes upon the face.]

Shannon Connor Winward

Writing by Shannon Connor Winward has appeared far and wide in places like Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, The Pedestal Magazine, Lunch Ticket, Rogue Agent, Argot, The Monarch Review, Cider Press Review, Literary Mama, and Rivet: the journal of writing that takes risks. She is a Delaware Division of the Arts Emerging Artist Fellow, and author of The Year of the Witch (Sycorax Press, 2018) and the Elgin-award winning chapbook Undoing Winter (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Shannon shares her body with chronic illnesses of the physical and mental persuasions, but her spirit is doing pretty well, now. In between parenting, writing and other madness, Shannon edits Riddled with Arrows Literary Journal.