Mistake House 2025
Issue 11, May 2025
From the Editor’s Desk
Welcome to Issue 11 of Mistake House Magazine. Our namesake, Principia’s Mistake House, is a small structure on campus that showcases the creative process of architect Bernard Maybeck. Built in 1931, this cottage allowed Maybeck to test the materials and methods he would later use throughout campus. Mistake House continues to inspire Mistake House Magazine, …
Suzanne Scanlon
Mistake House Magazine: Your first novel, Promising Young Women (2012), was published by Dorothy, a publishing project. You’ve described the process of working with Danielle Dutton, the co-founder of Dorothy, as “one of the most important experiences of [your] life.” How did you get involved with this feminist press, and what made the editorial experience …
Sayuri Ichida
Sayuri Ichida
Sayuri Ichida is a Japanese artist based in Margate, UK, specializing in photography. Born in Fukuoka, Japan, in 1985, her work explores themes of self-identity, personal memories, and life experiences, often focusing on the human form and sculptural objects to create thought-provoking images. Ichida graduated from Tokyo Visual Arts College in 2006 and completed an …
Sayuri Ichida
My creative process is deeply influenced by my personal history, cultural background, and a constant exploration of the impermanence of life. Born in Japan and raised in small towns surrounded by nature and industrial landscapes, my early experiences shaped my approach to photography. From a young age, I was drawn to the act of capturing …
Sayuri Ichida
Mistake House Magazine: You have said that you “look for beauty in scenes that evoke a sense of longing and timelessness.” What does “longing” and “timelessness” look like to you, and how do you photograph the beauty in these experiences? By extension, do you capture scenes as they occur in the world around you, or …
A Hatter’s Lament
Issue 11 Fiction Editor’s Prize August 18th A regular came in today, March. He asked for a hat that compliments the time for tea. He always raved to me: “Come now, brother, your downs have murdered the time.” I couldn’t care less about his nonsensical rambling, but Alice loves—loved. She loved. August 19th How cruel …
Sips Of Air
7 hours, 59 minutes, 35 seconds to deadline. 34 seconds. 33 seconds … 2 hours, 1 minute, and 32 seconds after the statement, “Let’s keep going ‘til sunrise, yeah?” Now, Amy lay mouth agape, neck bent back upon the beanbag chair, face glazed by a single tear of drool nearing the edge of her cheek, …
Suzanne Scanlon
OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES That was when I noticed I had become a character in other people’s stories. First, B sent me a story she had written: a nonfictiony fiction, she described it, about the friendship of two women. I am the friend in this scenario, the woman described as “a decade older” than the narrator. …
Suzanne Scanlon
A note on my creative process Reading and writing has always been a way to get closer to life, my own and others. For as long as I can remember, I have desired this ability to reshape and reclaim a story. I write about time and I write to resist time. Joseph Brodsky said that …
a failed first-aid kit—contents: art and jazz
Issue 11 Poetry Editor’s Prize Louisiana, wring me out in the streets of New Orleans, twist me like a wet rag that cleaned up the lacquered wood of a bar, i am residue. Bourbon …
reptile l/and?
I. arboreal ouroboros—loops jade coils of soft dermis and hard scales, rests its head amongst itself, ventral white and yellow dots its dorsal surface and are laid to rest in entwined vertebrae. slitted pupils stare back as i, not conspecific, lay in wait …
花樣年華
—you don’t know what it means, so lemme break it down through experience Imagine: you’re smokin’ on the balcony of a 2nd-floor 기숙사 / ki-suk-sa / dorm, high as fuck, lookin’ down at the world ‘cause a lil’ elevation makes you feel like 신 / shin / god on a throne in the sky, people …
Suzanne Scanlon
Suzanne Scanlon is an American writer of fiction and memoir. She was born and raised in Aurora, Illinois in 1971. Her father, a doctor, and her mother, a nurse, were born and raised Irish Catholic in Chicago. She attended Barnard College where she studied theater and literature. For many years, she worked as an actress, …
Sing, Bird, Sing
The baby bird fell out of the nest. The baby bird fell out of the nest, and the boy laughed. The baby bird fell out of the nest, the boy laughed, and I just watched. I don’t know why It’s the Sound of that laugh, I remember, the …
Inner Nature
I fear love will always be elusive like morning dew. I fear my own stormcloud in the distance. I fear I will freeze before the spring. I fear my sun will burn such gentle skin, and sting. I fear I cannot heal what hurts because I do not think to try. The butterfly and bee …
Horse Races On TV
I was a kid when I used to see Grandma every Thursday for lunch. No exceptions, unless someone was sick. Grandpa sipped his vermouth beneath the hot wooden ceiling, watching horse races on TV. They reminded him of his youth, and he pretended to make bets. After lunch, around one o’clock, I’d hear a train …
Soliloquy
You can never be alone within three walls even if you do not break the fourth You speak to yourself so that everyone hears You sneak so that all can see You become a paradox to reveal the truth
Photography
Bound Yet Free
Issue 11 Editor’s Prize for Photography
Wedding
By the time we got back to Colorado, the trees had started to rust. I had forgotten how Fall crisps the leaves there. High and dry. I had forgotten, too, that every footfall sets hordes of grasshoppers a-ping. Colorado is childhood, big and blue. I keep forgetting my brother is grown and can love a …
Shadow of Belonging
The Hope We Lost
I Is the world we live in The way it is supposed to be? I remember the garden, I remember the place, Where I loved, I laughed, I was loved. Is it still there? I don’t remember when I moved away. All I remember Is waking up and facing a new world: Love was gone, …
Lost and Becoming
Broken Introspection Reflection
Duality of Extremities
Cami and Vriddhi
Lin Pointing
Lasting Frame
There Are No More Roses
My Grandparents
The Moment After
Current Staff
Editor-in-Chief, Tobin Blair Tobin Blair (He/They) is a senior double majoring in history and sustainability. More than anything, they love thinking, and therefore they enjoy board games, books, deep conversations, and analyzing everything. Literarily, Tobin enjoys writing fiction, satire, and occasional nonsensical poems. This is Tobin’s fourth year in Mistake House, and second year as …
Will I Always
Will I always be able to write like this? The tea next to me is getting cold, the black and charred leaves at the bottom of the cup just as I remembered, cementing the dark wet foundation of my life. The river of red-light traffic, the streetlights shining through the winter fog, the underpasses over …
Stained Lichen
The sky is painted with pink strokes of bliss. So why do I look down? The disarray of rocks jabbing into the soles of my shoes is what draws my attention. I haven’t seen stones this large in decades, but now they’re cracked, broken. Around them, withered flowers lay without petals. Skeletons. I wonder why …