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Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words. Five minutes is edited by Susanna Baird, with editorial support from managing editor Maria s. picone, newsletter editor kate meen, and founding reader bobbi lerman, plus our rotating team of guest readers, who you can meet in the latest newsletteR. Five Minutes was founded in October 2020, with the Salem (Mass.)-based writing group Carrot Cake Writers supplying the journal’s first pieces. We’d love to read your five. Submit here. 

Five Minutes One hundred words

Sep 18
Sep 18 Conversations

David Henson

My wife tells me Randall called. She reminds me I met him and his wife, Gloria, at her class reunion a couple years ago.

Sep 15
Sep 15 Parole

Nancy Huggett

We wind our way along the canal ribboned with trees shifting into fall brilliance, sky an azure stillness and everything turning.

Sep 14
Sep 14 Before

Chandra Sundeep

Before I begin this chapter of my life, Sandy should know about my past.

Sep 13
Sep 13 Five, Measured

Jill Pabich

The face is friendly, with slender, graceful arms that I can’t see moving.

Sep 12
Sep 12 Roses

Swetha Amit

There wasn't enough entertainment when I was growing up.

Sep 11
Sep 11 Mind Games

Fiona H Evans

My mother tells me her new boyfriend calls her every day at seven.

Sep 6
Sep 6 Not a Sprint

Erin Dawkins

Mile eighteen. My body speaks to me; it tells me to stop.

Sep 5
Sep 5 Either/Or

Leslie Prpich

Lying still, curled tight, I try to calm my frenetic mind by focusing on the inaudible breaths of my two young sons asleep down the hall.

Sep 1
Sep 1 Homesick Blue

Sue Ann Gleason

Just a few short months into a makeshift marriage—husband again seeing the woman he promised he’d left behind—I sat in our ’67 Plymouth . . .

Aug 30
Aug 30 Your Father

Jim Almo

Your father is in good health? my doctor inquires, updating my family medical history.

Aug 29
Aug 29 A Lamp?

Christi Byerly

My mom and I made the trek to downtown Nairobi to buy a wrought-iron lamp to hang above her dining room table.

Aug 25
Aug 25 April 13, 1964

Keith Hood

Everyone, including white people, sees it.

Aug 23
Aug 23 Diamonds

Elizabeth Grey

I call to see if you’d like my mother’s diamonds.

Aug 22
Aug 22 Big Bad Apple

Shannon Clem

The closest I ever got to New York was Las Vegas. Nearly two hundred feet atop the roof of a casino.

Aug 21
Aug 21 Surprise Party

Sumitra Singam

Another girl brings him to the party. We yell Surprise! and they beam at each other.

Aug 18
Aug 18 Open Hands

Bethany Jarmul

Three blocks away, my husband and I hear the rolling, roaring, rushing of 3,160 tons of water plummeting over a cliff on the US-Canada border.

Aug 17
Aug 17 Heliotrope

Naz Knudsen

I press my fingers against the foggy glass, soaking in the last lingering glows.

Aug 16
Aug 16 Wrapping Paper

Elizabeth Maria Naranjo

You lift a fold of wrapping paper, winter blue with curls of silver, peeling back the foil with more care than it deserves.

Aug 15
Aug 15 Growing Out

Miriam BC Tobin

I stood at the mirror and traced my childhood with my finger along the white roots that appeared in my part.

Aug 14
Aug 14 Chalk

Marisa Gedgaudas

We walk through cathedrals of chalk. The place is wild and unfamiliar, although only a few hours from home.

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Five Minutes features micro-memoirs,
hundred-word pieces about five minutes in a life.
We’d love to read your five. Submit here. 
To receive our monthly newsletter, Five Minutes More, email susanna@fiveminutelit.com with the subject line: Newsletter.
To receive our weekly digest, containing the week’s stories, email susanna@fiveminutelit.com with the subject line: Digest.

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