Margaret Adams

My story “The Island” has been published in the featured fiction section of The Portland Review. You can read the full story online.

“Today the sea is dark, but while the sky is too cloudy for the ocean’s surface to reflect blue sunlight, the water seems to hold a glow of its own. Tessa and I keep the big rolling doors at the front of the workshop open as often as possible, even if it means layering on an extra sweater or two; the shingled building faces the sea, with the seaweed-strewn high-tide line just a hundred yards away down the rocky beach. From the sawhorse tables inside, we can watch the Monhegan ferry make its daily courses towards the mainland past Carver’s Cove...”

I wrote my first draft of “The Island” as part of a collection of salty fiction set on the Maine coast almost seven years ago. It feels really good to get it off my desk and into the world. It’s also just so interesting to look back at what I was writing just a few years ago (and feel like it was a lifetime ago!). It’s like a conversation with myself at twenty-two. I’m sure that sensation won’t get less pronounced with time.

This is my first publication with The Portland Review, an Oregon-based literary journal which has been publishing short prose, poetry and art since 1956. I’m excited to be published with a journal that carries such a long history.

From the literary journal’s blurb on Poets & Writers:

“The Portland Review Literary Journal has been publishing superb short prose, poetry and art since 1956. Contributors range from the celebrated to the unknown. Editors at The Review comb through thousands of submissions annually to produce a journal of exceptional quality. Our mission to promote new authors while maintaining strict editorial standards allows us to bring our readers fresh and innovative works from Oregon and around the world with every issue. The Review is published three times a year by the Portland State University Student Publications Board.”