All the Ways Home

By Oslo Writers' League

Adventure, safety, love, peace: people who travel the world seek out these things—and once they find them, some never go home again. It may be a conscious choice, or perhaps an inevitability, but the experience never fails to leave its mark upon the traveller.

All the Ways Home is a collection of short stories, essays, and poetry written by we who have chosen lives far from home, we whose paths stray from the well-trodden, and we who look in all directions for answers. Written to the themes of Identity and Crossroads, our stories and poems examine what makes us who we are, and how our choices affect the direction our lives take.

Oslo Writers’ League contributors are: Audrey Camp, Saroj Chumber, Sari Cunningham, Evelinn Enoksen, Mieka Ryley Farrell, Zoë Harris, Srividya Karthik, MJ Kobernus, Maddie Lama Sjåtil, Gisèle Le Chevallier, MaTT Loughlin, Alice Ludvigsen, Anna Maria Moore, Chelsea Ranger, Kirstin Reed, Espen Stenersrød, Mauricio Ruiz and Bree Switzer.

All profits and royalties will be donated to Utdanningshjelpen, a Norwegian volunteer organization offering scholarships to children and young people in developing countries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grimbold Books
• Release date: May 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781909845565

Book preview

All the Ways Home

An Oslo Writers' League Anthology

Curated by Zoë Harris

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www.grimboldbooks.com

All the Ways Home

Copyright © 2014 Grimbold Books

The authors of these works assert their moral right to be identified as the joint authors of this book.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Smashwords Edition

Up the River / I Am © 2014 Bree Switzer

An Unintended Cruelty / My Legacy is Your Voice © 2014 Chelsea Ranger

In Absentia / The Cancer Patient / Birthmark © 2014 Sari Cunningham

Expensive/Expansive / The Same Thorn © 2014 Maddie Lama Sjåtil

The Thing About Jonas © 2014 MJ Kobernus

The White Ribbon / The New Spring © 2014 Espen Stenersrød

Devil’s Road © 2014 Evelinn Enoksen

Sinober © 2014 Audrey Camp

Junctions © 2014 Mauricio Ruiz

The Long and Winding Road to Parenthood © 2014 Anna Maria Moore

Chapters © 2014 Alice Ludvigsen

Space © 2014 Mieka Ryley Farrell

The Gebärmutter © 2014 Kirstin Reed

Defect © 2013 Zoë Harris

The Parakeet Effect © 2014 Gisèle Le Chevallier

Poor Daniel © 2014 MaTT Loughlin

Vulnerable © 2014 Srividya Karthik

A Tea Party in Grorud © 2014 Saroj Chumber

Paperback ISBN 978-1-909845-54-1

EPUB ISBN 978-1-909845-56-5

Kindle ISBN 978-1-909845-55-8

Cover art by Cindy Lackey

Cover design by Ken Dawson

Ebook design by Book Polishers

Grimbold Books

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Banbury

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OX16 9TY

United Kingdom

www.grimboldbooks.com

All profits from the sale of this book will go to Utdanningshjelpen, a Norwegian volunteer organization offering scholarships to children in developing countries.

Acknowledgements

All The Ways Home would not have come together if it weren’t for the hard work of the following people:

Audrey Camp spent countless hours editing the poetry for this anthology, continuing to work and support our poets even after she travelled back to the States for a visit with her family. We thank her for her forthright attitude, skill, support, and dedication.

Special thanks to Cindy Lackey for the stunning and unique cover art, and Ken Dawson of Creative Covers for the book cover design. Both contributed their time at no cost. We are so grateful to both of you.

Thanks also to Sari Cunningham and Hazel Butler for their epic proofreading work, which saved unfathomable amounts of time, embarrassment, and sanity. Sari stayed up past midnight before production day, scouring the book for last minute corrections; she is an absolute star.

Saroj Chumber and Chelsea Ranger worked tirelessly to arrange the launch event, and we would like to thank them both, as well as the great team at Litteraturhuset for hosting us, and to Greta Solomon for agreeing to moderate the panel discussion.

Anthony and Nicole from Café Fedora ought to be awarded medals for their continued support of OWL. They not only hosted our first book launch, but in 2014 hosted our meetings, fed us, stayed up late with us while we discussed everything from research to book titles, and they continue to do it all with smiles and laughter. We love you guys and we’re so happy to welcome Nicole as a new member.

Thanks always to Felix, Erik, and everyone at Utdanningshjelpen, for continuing to encourage and support our growth as writers as we work together to bring literacy into more and more lives around the world.

We are eternally grateful to have the ongoing support of Grimbold Books. Thank you for publishing this anthology, and for saving the previous one from going out of print.

To all the authors who have contributed pieces, supported each other at meetings and online, listened, critiqued, and been patient with the changes as we grow and adapt, my heartfelt thanks to you for making this group what it is.

And, finally, thanks to our readers for purchasing this book and supporting Utdanningshjelpen and the continuing development and support of the Oslo Writers’ League and its members.

Contents

Introduction

Crossroads

Up the River – Bree Switzer

An Unintended Cruelty – Chelsea Ranger

In Absentia – Sari Cunningham

Expensive / Expansive – Maddie Lama Sjåtil

The Thing About Jonas – MJ Kobernus

The white ribbon – Espen Stenersrød

Devil’s Road – Evelinn Enoksen

Sinober – Audrey Camp

Junctions – Mauricio Ruiz

The Long and Winding Road to Parenthood – Anna Maria Moore

The Cancer Patient – Sari Cunningham

Chapters – Alice Ludvigsen

The new spring – Espen Stenersrød

Identity

Space – Mieka Ryley Farrell

I am – Bree Switzer

The Gebärmutter – Kirsten Reed

Defect – Zoë Harris

The Same Thorn – Maddie Lama Sjåtil

The Parakeet Effect – Gisèle Le Chevallier

Birthmark – Sari Cunningham

Poor Daniel – MaTT Loughlin

Vulnerable – Srividya Karthik

A Tea Party in Grorud – Saroj Chumber

My Legacy is Your Voice – Chelsea Ranger

About the Authors

Introduction

Zoë Harris

Director, OWL

At this moment, somewhere in the world, a man is stepping off a plane and placing his foot on foreign soil, overwhelmed with the knowledge he is now home. In another land, a woman is waving from behind the bulletproof glass to her family on the other side of an immigration check-point, knowing she will never truly be able to say the word ‘home’ again, and have it mean only this place, and these people.

Adventure, safety, love, peace: people who travel the world seek out these things—and once they find them, some never go home again. It may be a conscious choice, or perhaps an inevitability, but the experience never fails to leave its mark upon the traveller.

The Oslo Writers’ League (OWL) is made up almost entirely of world travellers. These wanderers and settlers chose the themes for our second anthology, Crossroads and Identity, thinking of the choices they have faced, and how those choices have become a part of them. To be a traveller, or an expatriate, is to call more than one place home, and to make decisions that affect who we are, and who we will become.

But, as is always the case with writers, the stories and poems in this book reach further into these themes than travel and experience; they speak of longing, regret, anticipation, and even absolution.

In the first part of the book, Crossroads, Alice Ludvigsen looks back over the path her life has taken as a wife and mother in Chapters, whereas Anna Maria Moore ponders the changes that motherhood will bring to her future in The Long and Winding Road to Parenthood, while in his poem, Junctions, Mauricio Ruiz reflects on the choices faced by a woman who may have waited too long. MJ Kobernus shows us how a conscious choice to be strong can echo throughout a lifetime in The Thing About Jonas, and Maddie Lama Sjåtil describes the agony of lingering over decisions made, and those yet to be made, in Expensive/Expansive. Bree Switzer takes us on a stroll up Akerselva, and into the lives of two people struggling to overcome the past in order to consider a future together in Up the River, while Audrey Camp hikes us through Oslomarka, determined to find hot chocolate and safety, in Sinober. Evelinn Enoksen tells of a fairytale encounter with the first evil in Devil’s Road, and we are treated to two poems by Espen Stenersrød, The white ribbon and The new spring, which ultimately reflect on release and regrowth.

Then, in an exploration of Identity, Gisèle Le Chevallier looks to her family history for insight into herself in The Parakeet Effect, as MaTT Loughlin ponders the effects of alcoholism in a father-son relationship in Poor Daniel. Kirstin Reed shows us the bond forged between two women in a cancer ward in The Gebärmutter, while Mieka Ryley Farrell’s Space echoes with the emptiness of loss. Saroj Chumber describes the confusion of living between two cultures in A Tea Party in Grorud, and similarly, I talk about being a stranger in my own culture in Defect. Srividya Karthik grapples with the perceived flaw of being breakable in her poem Vulnerable, while Sari Cunningham’s poem, Birthmark, speaks of longing. Finally, Chelsea Ranger’s unique poem, My Legacy is Your Voice, originally a performance piece, has been presented in this book to mirror the undulating nature of visual music.

For the second year running, OWL will donate all profits from sales of this book to the Norwegian volunteer organization, Utdanningshjelpen (UH), which offers scholarships to children and youth in Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya and Ethiopia who would not otherwise be able to complete their education; UH relies on the generosity of its volunteers, regular donors and other fundraising efforts to supply these scholarships. Managing Director of UH, Erik Myrun Næss, says:

OWL’s support of UH through its book projects is an important contributor to our work. We are very grateful for the group’s continuing support and interest in what we do.

The members of OWL are proud to contribute as much as we can to help these children, who might otherwise be forced to give up their studies to support themselves and their families. Last year’s anthology raised enough money to fund two and a half students through a full year’s education, a figure we hope to exceed with this new volume.

Though our annual anthology is a fundraising effort, and an outward expression of what we each write, OWL’s first and most important goal is to assist writers in honing their craft. Our membership has more than doubled since the release of the 2013 anthology, North of the Sun, South of the Moon, and we are proud to be an ongoing source of mutual support, development and, most importantly, inspiration for writers in the Oslo area.

In this anthology, we have included stories and poems probing the questions of who we are, where we are, and how the choices we make affect the direction our lives take. We may never know the answers, but for writers, the sustenance we seek is, after all, in the questions themselves.

Crossroads

Up the River

Bree Switzer

Canada

Fiction

Jessie woke up with her heart pounding. It was dark. At first she didn’t know where she was or what day it was. Then she remembered. Sagene. Oslo. The river was just down the hill. The centre of the city straight down the river. Maya, her friend, her closest friend, had been with her the day before and was only a half-hour walk away. She had been living in this upstairs flat, with its one bedroom, small kitchen, and tiny bathroom for almost five months. But all this seemed small, insignificant, almost unreal, in comparison with the pounding in her chest.

Jessie reached over and felt around for the hanging switch of the lamp on the bedside table. When the warm light filled the room, she squeezed her eyes shut against the brightness, then opened them slowly, peering out through her eyelashes for a moment before she opened them fully. Her heartbeat was starting to slow. She pulled herself up and lay back against her pillow and the wall. She realized she was grasping the edge of the duvet up against her chest. She relaxed her hold and took a breath. The light made her feel better. She stared at the wall ahead of her: powder blue wooden slats. What was it she had dreamed?

It was awful, she knew that. Something about a forest. A really thick forest. But not at first. It was a familiar place, probably the woods not far from her parents’ house back home. And her mom, a strong feeling of her mom. Oh God, now she remembered. Jessie had been running through the forest. It was twilight, and in the forest it was almost completely dark already. She wasn’t running away from anything, that wasn’t the awful part, she was just running, for exercise, or maybe to make it somewhere on time. The feeling she could remember about the running had an edge of anxiousness, of needing to be somewhere or to get something done. A bird had shot up out of the bushes to Jessie’s right and startled her. That was when she saw her mom, off to the side, lying under some bushes. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes blocked from Jessie’s view by leaves. Jessie had tried to scream, Mom! and fallen to her knees to help her, but no sound had come out, and the terror had jerked her awake.

Jessie wrapped her arms tightly round herself.

Thank God, she breathed.

*

Jessie had finally gotten her driver’s licence one summer when she was home from music school. She must have been twenty-two. She had been driving for years, but had never taken the final step to get her licence until then.

It was her mom who suggested Jessie take her for a drive out to the gravel pit, and they would take the Turtle Rock path from there.

It would be nice to go for a walk together, her mother had said. Jessie thought it was weird. Her mother never suggested they do anything alone together. They always did things as a family. She sometimes took Katya, who was still in school then, to Dairy Queen in the summer. Jessie tried not to care, told herself her sister should get to do special things with Mom, since she was younger. Jessie had had five years alone with their mother before Katya was born, after all. But still, she was jealous; Mom and Katya actually got along.

So Jessie knew she should be happy that her mom was suggesting they do something together, but instead it just made her mad. Why now? was all she could think.

She told her mom she didn’t have much time, but they could go after supper that evening. This led to a fight when her mom said, Well, let’s just go another time then. When’s good for you? and Jessie answered, No, Mom, today’s the only day I can. Her mom said, Fine, and went quiet after that.

Jessie and Katya were both home for supper that evening, which was unusual for summertime. And it was a very quiet supper. Katya was always quiet. Their dad wasn’t much of a talker either, and since Theresa was clearly mad at Jessie, neither of them said much either. Finally Jessie had broken the silence with, Good food, Mom, thanks.

Theresa had said, Your dad made it, and got up to do the dishes.

She couldn’t remember if they had ever taken that walk.

*

Later that day, Jessie got out her guitar. She hadn’t played much since returning from Bergen a few days earlier. She touched her pointer finger lightly to the top string and her middle finger to the one below, plucking the strings gently