My latest short story, The Last Refuge, can be read in the Spring 2026 edition of DASH, the literary journal out of California State University-Fullerton. There was a bit of a mixup, apparently, and so contributors just recently got their copies. DASH does not have an online component so you have to get hold of a copy in order to read it.
The Last Refuge is the final version of a flash piece I wrote way back in 2007 for my dad. It was nothing literary, just a little piece about playing catch in the backyard, which I never intended to try to get published. After his death in 2013, the story found me again, and I reworked it over and over and over, unhappy with each draft but unclear what to do with it. At one point it was wholly surreal, with bleeding trees and albino tomatoes, then wholly realistic, and back and forth. Its final form came with a slightly surreal nature meditating on impermanence and the continuity of fathers and children.
I’m grateful to everyone at DASH and those at CSU-Fullerton who support the arts. Arts aren’t necessary to live, but they are necessary to live well. Never contract out your creativity to AI. Whatever your art, keep it wholly human. Anything else is trash.
