The Seventh Day of Rain, by Azaria Brown

Prose, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

On the seventh consecutive day of rain, the St. James family marks the final day of mourning for their late uncle, Junior. After just seven days without their anchor, the family begins to drift apart: Charlotte struggles with her role as matriarch; Angel searches for new ways to claim the attention of strangers; Lex yearns for their own identity; Jamie questions what will fill the Junior-shaped hole in their lives; and Byrd ponders abandoning the family altogether. By nightfall, the rain finally stops, and the St. Jameses gather because, despite their differences, there’s nowhere else they’d rather be.

Azaria Brown writes magical realism and speculative stories about family and relationship dynamics, spirituality, religion, and death. Azaria received her MFA from Butler University in the Spring of 2023. She was a TED Residency Finalist in 2018 and a recipient of the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Author Fellowship. In 2022, Azaria became a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and she was the first place winner of the Plaza Prizes International Flash Fiction Contest in 2023. Azaria is also a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she teaches freshman English. Her work has been published in Hobart, Entropy Magazine, Honey Literary, Awake, Sandhills Literary Magazine, and The Georgia Review.