The Parched Lands

Amanthi is a teenage student in a not-so-distant future school system of hyper-testing and top-down control. In this world, creativity is a liability — but Amanthi is not deterred from dreaming. THE PARCHED LANDS delves into the tangled issues of race, tracking, high-stakes testing, and creativity starvation that run through America’s public school systems. This short story was published as a part of Crossed Genres Magazine 2.0, Issue 7: Expectations.