Blog

Ani King's " Deer Run " appeared in the Winter 2026 issue of Broad Ripple Review. What is your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have? My favorite punctuation is actually no punctuation or wrong punctuation for the effect. I just love seeing what disregarding the rules can do to bring another layer to the narrative, how it can affect pacing, of course, but also what it does for the personality of the story, how it can be an element of characterization on its ow

Alfred Luarca's " Red Commas " appears in the Winter 2026 issue of Broad Ripple Review. What is your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have? Favorite punctuation: The semicolon. It’s a pause with backbone; part stop, part breath, part insistence. It refuses closure and holds two truths at once: this mattered; we continue. Hot take: Sometimes the push for “relatable” stories can make books feel the same. I’m more interested in fiction that surprises me and chang

Kristine Langley Mahler's " A Plate, a Name, a Pile of Dirt" can be found in the Winter 2026 issue of Br oad Ripple Review. What is your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have? I’m an inveterate ALL CAPS user—that might not be official punctuation, but it’s my favorite by far, and is connected to my hot take, which is MORE ALL CAPS PLEASE!   What inspired you to write “A Plate, a Name, a Pile of Dirt”? I began this piece a handful of years ago as I was rearran

Zary Fekete's " The Things I Do Not Throw Away " can be found in the Winter 2026 issue of Broad Ripple Review. What is your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have?  My favorite punctuation are the ellipsis. I use them all the time for trailing, unfinished thoughts...or pauses :) My literary hot take: We learn early to crave stories that arrive with railings and exits, narratives that promise the dark will be brief and the meaning will announce itself on schedul

Yvette Naden's " Confessing to Mrs. Dalloway Through a Bathroom Door " appears in the Winter 2026 issue of Broad Ripple Review. What is your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have? Favorite Punctuation: Parentheses because when used, it's as if the text takes on a life of its own, as if the narrative is interrupting itself to reveal a sense of uncertainty or vulnerability. I like the idea that even the book knows it's holding something back and wants to correct

L.B . Browne is the winner of the 2025 Broad Ripple Review Prize in Fiction. Her story, " The Dress Department " appears in the Fall 2025 issue of Broad Ripple Review What's your favorite punctuation? The em dash. Real thought isn’t linear and doesn’t arrive whole, and the em dash is honest enough to capture that. No other mark so boldly and elegantly barges in, interrupts language, changes direction midstream, and then steers a sentence back on track.   A literary hot take

Dorit d'Scarlett's story " Green Jumper " appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Broad Ripple Review. What is your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have? Brackets — though I rarely use them, I want to use them more. I love the way they create a secret chamber inside a sentence, a kind of afterthought or whisper that runs parallel to the main thought. Hot take: novels don’t need neat resolutions. Ambiguity is closer to how life is actually lived. A present moment,

Sofía Carbonell Realme's essay " Pearls in the Kitchen" appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Broad Ripple Review. What's your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have?   I love the em dash. It’s so— breathlessly—expressive, don’t you think? It also reminds me of Emily Dickinson.   Literary hot take: the 18 th  century is a skip.   What led you to submit “Pearls in the Kitchen” to a literary magazine versus a more academic one?   You know, I’ve never thought of thi

Margaret Dunn's story "Little Eden" appears in the Fall 2025 issue of Broad Ripple Review. What is your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have? Diehard fan of the em dash. "The Rules of Attraction" is Bret Easton Ellis’s best work, and it’s one of the best campus novels ever written. What led you to write “Little Eden”? I’ve always been interested in girlhood and ‘loss of innocence’ stories. Adolescence is the first time girls experience intimacy outside of th

Angela Townsend is the winner of the 2025 Broad Ripple Review Prize in Nonfiction. Her story, " Write Until You Pray " appears in the Fall 2025 issue of Broad Ripple Review . What's your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have? I will never outgrow the innocence of the exclamation point! It is life bubbling over, all earnest and unguarded. It keeps company with daisies and comets. It is the first kid in the cafeteria to admit to loving something uncool. It is a