Some of the stories mentioned here (“Genevieve”, “Sexy Sadie”, “The Man of Her Dreams”, “Teacher May”, “At Sea”, “Somebody!”, “Country Club Kids”, “After Glow”, “Cold Paradise”, “Portent”, “Friday Night Fish Fry”, “Soca Night”, “Rhythms”, and “Martin, Dorie, and Luis: a Love Story”) are featured in my 2014 collection Dancing Nude in the Moonlight 10th Anniversary edition and Other Writings. Find that and my other BOOKS here, and see poetry and other journaled writing as well for more of my writing. This list may also include fictional responses to prompts published here on the blog, just to keep track of my writing.
“Lucille and Clifton” (a Christmas-time Caribbean tale of gothic horror) – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – December 2022
Excerpt: “And Lucille, as she sop his brow and kiss his neck, think back to how slavery is slavery is slavery because she not in the hot sun but she in easy reach of mistress’s slaps and pinches, and massa, the way he pinch the fleshy parts of her when he full up of cane juice and heat, and though she don’t own sheself she lock up as much of herself as she could tight tight and seal it up in a calabash.”
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[Bullet] – an online writing exercise response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2022
Excerpt: “He lay there and just breathed, counting his heart beats until he could no longer hear them, no longer feel pin pricks in his arm.”
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“Ixie and Izzy” (Long Love Song) in Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters – Issue 20: Thanksgiving – Speculative Fiction Capsule curated by Fabrice Guerrier – (this story was written in response to write in the “Sky Islands” Fictional World)- 2021
Excerpt: “There is a tree whose bark is grey and stripped of life. Its limbs have been amputated to prevent the spread of disease but the lines of infection curve up its side like country roads. It doesn’t grow anymore. Insistent as nature is, new growth doesn’t even seek it out.”
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“Freedom Cup – The Games are Coming” – (unpublished, longlisted for the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean) – 2021
Excerpt: “The sun was still grudging in its affections though it was high noon by the time they reached the stadium site.”
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“Times A-Changing” – a fictional piece published in my CREATIVE SPACE art and culture column – July 2021
Excerpt: “They made the man lift his shirt, patted him down. He turned away, and right away one of them hooked him by the back of his pants so that it rode up like a wedgy. It made him look like a school boy and Alice felt embarrassed for him.”
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“Vincent” – (unpublished, longlisted for the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean) – 2020
Excerpt: “It had been only a handful of years since 65 forced his retirement. Some days he forgot that, still took the bus to work, other days he went anyway though he knew the deal, because he still had friends there, young ones he had mentored into the job, and he had nowhere else to go. Today was a day somewhere in between.”
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“The Mango Tief” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2018
Excerpt: “I cut my eye at her. Fresh pickney.”
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“The Night the World Ended” in The Caribbean Writer Volume 32 – 2018
Excerpt: “I was folding up the children’s school socks by feel and candlelight, wondering how they got to be so many, as I listened. He chatted and played music, and it felt like any other night. The storm updates felt far between and the storm itself far away. Then the wind started to blow.”
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“Papa Jumbie” in Akashic’s Duppy Thursday series – September 13th 2017
Excerpt:
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“Too Strange” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2017
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“Little Prissy Palmer” in The Machinery – March 24th 2017
Excerpt: “Being from a village behind God back, Prissy didn’t have friends there either. The island was mostly black, the school was mostly white, and Prissy, with skin the dull shade of a peanut shell, was neither this nor that. Always a minority, and cursed with her daddy’s cast eye and the bully-bait name he’d burdened her with, school days were very long for little Prissy Palmer.”
Read in full here.
This story was listed by FunTimes magazine in an article entitled: “Stories from 4 Antiguan and Barbudan Authors to Read on Antigua and Barbuda Independence Day” in 2021
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“The Other Daughter” in Adda – February 14th 2017
Excerpt: “My daddy is Prime Minister. I was born in the back room of a whore house on Popeshead Street. I lived there with my mother.”
There is analysis of “The Other Daughter” at studienet.dk and the story was on Denmark’s secondary school national assessment.
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“Divas” – an online writing exercise response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2017
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“The Death of Mr. Richardson” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
Excerpt: “At thirteen, she’d been crushing on Brad Pitt but hadn’t yet quite put away Barbie.”
“Colin and the World Beyond” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
“Empath” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
“Springtime Friends in September” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
“The Snakemonster” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
“Original Sin” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
“A Bad Day in the Imaginarium” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
Excerpt: “I am one of only 10 select students in this advanced class and at this very moment Ms. Maddow was wondering why she had ever thought there was potential in any of us; potential in me.”
“38: Our Meet-Cute” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
“In War, Music” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
“Love is Magic” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
“Lamplight” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
“Clear” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
“Sad Clown” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2016
Excerpt: “I will not be your tragic artist.”
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“Zombie Island” in Interviewing the Caribbean 2016 Vol. 2 No.1, A History of Violence Part 1, the Making of Caribbean Society – 2016:
Excerpt: “It began with a boy shoving a knife into another boy’s back broad daylight at the west going bus stop, and my mother, watching it on the news that night, tut-tut-tutting about gangs and drugs and how nobody respected their school uniform anymore, as though that mattered when the trending story on our sleepy 108 square mile island was boy stabs boy for no clear reason. Well, it didn’t begin there but that’s when I took notice. Because, see, I knew the boy, Emerson, who had wielded the knife and the Emerson I knew was startled by his own shadow.”
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“Game Changer” in Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters – Issue 9, July 2016:
Excerpt: “I could see those lips on billboards in close up and, as a result, in hundreds of women’s fantasies. I knew the woman too. She’d be about my age, 23, driven, too driven to settle or settle down just yet, but in possession of a working vibrator and an active imagination. I wonder if that’s why my boss chose me. The singer’s father wasn’t lying when he implied that I was too young, too fresh for such a big, and tricky, account.”
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“It was rape…um…I think” (submitted as What was and was not) on sexual assault during Carnival ran in online magazine The Crier in 2016. The Crier has since gone offline. It was reposted as Carnival Hangover on this blog in 2017. In 2020, Intersect, an Antigua-Barbuda gender advocacy group, accepted it for publication as Carnival Hangover and excerpted a teaser on their social media
Read the story or listen on soundcloud. As of 2021, the Intersectantigua.com recording is available on my AntiguanWriter YouTube channel.
Excerpt: Excerpt: “A fantasy of body suits and shiny things, music and rum – the very act of Carnival, itself, a masque or an unmasking, she supposed, depending on how you chose to look at it.”
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“Pieces of the Past” – a prompt response published exclusively on the Jhohadli blog – 2015
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“When We danced” (winner of the Caribbean Writer Flash Fiction Prize) Volume 29 of The Caribbean Writer – 2015:
Excerpt: “You were wearing pink and a smile.”
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“What’s in a Name” – BIM: Arts for the 21st Century – Volume 7 – 2015:
Excerpt: “Matthew Henry Luke was, at seven, an odd looking boy; small for his age, but with a man-sized head. From the settled look of him there wouldn’t be much more growing either, not in his body anyway. The head looked like it was just getting started.”
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“With Grace” (unpublished fairy tale named honourable mention in the) Desi Writers Lounge short story contest – 2014. This story is now my picture book With Grace. The Desi judges said: “This story came ever so close to making it to the top three. With Grace combines feelings of love, hate, greed and generosity to weave a powerful narrative that is magical in spirit and human in character. Hillhouse is an accomplished writer and her elegant prose shines through in this story.”
Excerpt: “The grinning tree faerie does a little wine and bubble as the girl sings, loving this new world.”
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“To Market, Snapshot” – Susumba’s Book Bag
issue 1 – 2014:
Excerpt: “The bride he’d squired in the Cuban cane fields might not speak a word of English, but as sure as she’d known, on seeing the mischief in his eyes and the loneliness behind it, that he would bring love and adventure into her life, that she would bring family back into his, she knew this woman was important.”
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“Something Wicked”, ‘Story of the Week’ in The Missing Slate
– 2014 (also published as “Carnival Blues” in The Caribbean Writer Volume 27 – 2013):
Excerpt: “She presses some buttons and the screaming starts again and though Claudette knows it isn’t real, her feet dance a bit on the floor of the passenger-side of Essie’s dad’s Suzuki, as though trying to get away.”
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“Is Like a Like It” (screenplay excerpt) in The Caribbean Writer – Volume 27 – 2013:
Excerpt: “She begins powdering her face and neck, heavily. Then she applies lip stick, eye shadow, rouge, eye liner, false eye lashes. The coloured wig follows. Finally, long dangly earrings that match lip stick, wig, and eye shadow.”
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“All Fall Down” in Womanspeak: a Journal of Art and Writing by Caribbean Women Volume 7 – 2013:
Excerpt: “I cry most when I think of her. I cry late at night, when there are no more visitors and everyone sleeps. I can’t sleep.”
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“The Cat has Claws” in Akashic Books’ Mondays are Murder series – 2013:
Excerpt: “Goldine paused in her walk up the bumpy path to Pastor Williams’s house. She removed the straw hat keeping company with her soaking wet head kerchief; fanned with it, for all the good that did. She looked up the road to where the house stood alone, alabaster white against the green hills rolling away from it. The crotons, bougainvillea, pussy tail, and other foliage in the expansive yard looked limp .” Read the whole thing
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“Amelia” (shortlisted, unpublished) in the Small Axe Literary Competition – 2013 (subsequently submitted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and selected by them for publication in 2014 in Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean and excerpted in 2014 on PEN.org, and in 2017 and 2021 in Harper Collins’ Concise Revision Course – English A – a Concise Revision Course for CSEC):
Excerpt: “How long she screams, before finally sitting in the dirt dejectedly like a two year old, she doesn’t know. But they never look in her direction. And as they start to pack up and pull away, she grows desperate, doesn’t want to be left alone, up here at the Eastern edge of the island. All alone; not knowing how she is going to get home.”
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“Genevieve” (shortlisted) in the Small Axe Literary Competition – 2012 (subsequently published in 2014 in Dancing Nude in the Moonlight 10th Anniversary Edition and Other Writings):
Excerpt: “And so she liked evenings where it felt like she was walking away from her life into this sunset that bathed the evening in possibility. So much was possible on the dawn of sunset, as she huffed and puffed her way up Garvey Hill. Like maybe tonight she wouldn’t eat more than her portion of the leftover seasoned rice. And maybe tonight she wouldn’t feel so alone.”
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“Teacher May” in Poui Number XII – 2011:
Excerpt: “But there was something else, something to do with the search for a daddy, a place to be. His mother had tried, she’d tried her best, and I wished I could comfort her and tell her that.”
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“At Sea” in Munyori – 2011:
Excerpt: “And here they both were, father and daughter; waiting.”
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“Somebody” in St. Somewhere – Autumn 2010 (read: St. Somewhere Journal Autumn 2010):
Excerpt: “It wasn’t much of a life.”
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“Country Club Kids” in The Caribbean Writer Volume 24 – 2010:
Excerpt: “He tries to psyche me out before the next serve, steely stare and all. But then, my backhand meets his forehand and we’re off again; until my dark skin is slick and his usually pale skin blushes hibiscus red. His bangs are dripping sweat into his eyes and unto his nose, and I can feel water running between my cornrows.”
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“After Glow” in Tongues of the Ocean – 2009 (subsequently published in 2012 in So the Nailhead Bend, So the Story End):
Excerpt: “Glory turned her back on the day, reaching for the dream with languid arms; like a lover tired from the last round of lovemaking but yearning for more. But, like a lover who’d had enough, the dream drifted away.”
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“Cold Paradise” in Women Writers – Special Issue (Serving the Spirits: Women and Voodoo in Literature and Popular Culture) August 2008:
Excerpt: “Devil’s Bridge, as it is called, is a wide open space with fat slabs of jagged rock; some bleached white, some almost black with moss.”
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“Portent” in Women Writers – Special Issue (Serving the Spirits: Women and Voodoo in Literature and Popular Culture) August 2008:
Excerpt: “She remembered vividly being ripped from this womb, the day the woman trudged up the hill purposefully; come up from the city, Roseau, to claim her.”
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“Friday Night Fish Fry” in Sea Breeze Journal Volume 5 Issue 1 – 2008 (also read in 2008 at the Breadloaf Writers Conference):
Excerpt: “They were bold, these kids; stared you straight in the face, a dare in their eyes and in the set of their shoulders.”
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“Soca Night” in Carnival is All We Know: Daily Observer’s 50th Anniversary of Carnival’s literary and artistic anthology (which I also edited) – 2007
Excerpt: “- high heels, hoity-toity-ness and all – ”
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“Rhythms” in The Caribbean Writer Volume 18 – 2004:
Excerpt: “Moses is still on the bass, turning this way and that in time with the faster rhythm. In his shadow, playing air pan, is Ashe, his movements an echo of his father’s.”
(Video is of me reading an excerpt from ‘Rhythms’ and the poem ‘An Ode to the Pan Man’ during a Caribbean Writer virtual event – 2020)
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“Martin, Dorie and Luis: A Love Story” in the Sunday Observer Literary Arts Section in Jamaica – January 18th 2004:
Excerpt: “It was then he realized he was still holding her arm. He let go. Though, Martin could acknowledge, without pride or regret, all these years later, he had never really let go.”
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“Bitter Memories” in Collective Soul – 1998:
Excerpt: “She felt powerless in the face of his arrogance.”
^Fiction Trivia: First published work of fiction was serialized in the local Nation newspaper in my teens.
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