by Amber Wheeler Bacon

I keep finding myself telling people that the AC in my car just went out. It did. And it’s been hot. And now I’m telling all of you. But the thing is, heat is something I can handle, even in this year’s sweltering temps. I love sweating, and then walking into an air conditioned house. I love afternoon naps in hot rooms with just a ceiling fan blowing. Summer is my favorite time of year. In some ways, I wonder if I chose the teaching profession so that I could keep my childhood summers: open, listless, carefree. Lying around reading and watching tv intermittently for hours; or taking turns in the sprinkler then trampoline, watching the drops of water fly from my skin, land on the plastic mesh netting, and evaporate instantly; laborious showers in my bathing suit while my mother disentangled Panama City Beach seaweed from my waist-length hair; sun-up to sundown picnics and swimming at Lake Allatoona near where I grew up. This year’s issue of TPR, to me, feels like summer—bright and hot, frisky and fun, sometimes sunburn raw, both light and dark, like fireflies flickering on a warm night. The flash issue was inspired by a workshop series I taught in June. Most of the pieces here are 1000 words or less, but despite their small forms, these stories cast a wide net. They’ve got summers in the swamps of South Carolina and renovated asylums in Traverse City, Michigan, summers in Beirut and Brooklyn. It’s got first love and death and the heat of a Charleston kitchen, the heat of sickness and war, the heat of a summer fairground. What a pleasure it’s been to work with our twenty-five contributors to bring this summer issue of TPR into being. 

Thank you for supporting writers and the literary arts in South Carolina by reading The Petigru Review.

Happy Summer, readers!

The Petigru Review, Issue 16

Special Flash Issue

Summer 2023