We are thrilled to present “The Cats” by the 2020-2021 Pen Parentis Writing Fellow, Dawn Ryan.

Dawn’s story was first published as the cover story in print in the gorgeous Issue 7 of Dreamers Creative Writing Magazine available here.

Dreamers Creative Writing has just made the story available online. Please read and share widely!

Dawn’s story proves that if you are talented it shows even in the shortest story – and that having a child is no impediment to that talent – so go write your own very short story. If it’s as great as “The Cats” it could have an equally long life!

The Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship for New Parents is open to any writer caring for a child under 10 years old. We know it’s hard – we are giving you incentives to keep at it! We change the word count every year to encourage you to write new work (don’t worry, the word counts are always very small!) Find out more about the Fellowship. It opens for new submissions from March 1 to April 17 every year.

Congratulations to our marvelous current fellow!  Find out more about her here!

Video of Dawn reading her winning story!

Video of first-runner up: Becky-Fine Firesheets reading her heart-stopping story!

Third place was great too: video of Audrey Burges reading her story!!

All of these stories are amazing.

If you have a terrific essay, story, stand-alone excerpt, or poem that needs a loving (and really well designed) home, have a look at the submission guidelines for Dreamers Creative Writing!

Need some help getting back to the basics? Here’s a great curated list of writing craft books suitable for writers with kids.