What We Now Live With, by Andrea Marcusa

Prose, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Random acts of violence, heartbreaking homelessness, mental health issues, loneliness, income discrepancies, and free-floating anxiety are viewed through the lens of this observant and compassionate writer. What We Now Live With contains hard hitting flash fiction and prose poems that reflect the challenges, heartbreak and hope that exist simultaneously for people living in today’s complex world. In concise, beautifully written prose, these pieces offer glimpses at communities and individuals undergoing loss, trauma, and change, and how characters navigate the often confusing and painful terrain they find themselves on and, how they often find a glimmer of hope amongst it all.

This collection takes the reader to a range of settings, including the Pulitzer Fountain outside The Plaza Hotel, the cabin of a rocket launching into outer space, a 747 zooming toward the West Coast, a suburban kitchen, a child’s classroom, and New York City’s Central Park. Regardless of the setting, the characters in these carefully constructed pieces each reveal a universal truth about humanity and in doing so allow the reader to connect to something larger than themselves.

Andrea Marcusa’s writings have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Cutbank, River Teeth, Milk Candy Review, Citron Review, Best Microfiction and others. She’s received recognition in a range of competitions, including Smokelong, Cleaver, Raleigh Review, New Letters and Southampton Review. She’s a member the faculty at The Writer’s Studio, where she also studies in the Master Class with poet Philip Schultz. For more information, visit: andreamarcusa.com or see her on X: @d_marcusa