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Daytona
Fiction by Nathan Willis The cars stay bunched together. When they go by, I cover my ears. It’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. It doesn’t bother the other people in the stands. They aren’t tourists like Harp and me. They understand the flags and strategies. They know the backstories of every team and every…
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If It Plays in Peoria: A Glossary of Midwestern Survival
Creative Nonfiction by Megan Cannella saying, I used to date a lot of managers of strip clubs for a while verb meaning to have tried too much meaning to have cowered in ways that surprised you meaning to have smelled like fried food more frequently than is comfortable meaning…
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Soundscapes: Story as a Place to Dwell
by Erin Calabria It is a grey afternoon in Germany. It is almost always a grey afternoon in Germany, and my ears are buried in headphones, as they so often are these days, because there is nowhere to go right now, and no way to get there. So instead, I’m scrolling through voice memos, teleporting…
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Tired
Fiction by Stuart Watson I had been walking not quite an hour when I came to the truck. It sat on blocks. Four drums, no wheels. Or tires. A plywood sign rose from its bed. NEED TIRES That, I did. Just one, not like the truck. But was the sign referring to the truck, or…
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The Fractured Mirror: The Tree and the Well at the Center of Folklore
by Edward Karshner My daughter, Alex, was five years old when I took her home for the first time. Home meaning the homeplace, a narrow road through a hollow called Spud Run. My origin place, settled by my great-grandparents, who I know only through stories. As we drove through the hills and hollows of southeastern…
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Sedona
Creative Nonfiction by Hannah Grieco After Elane Johnson After I found his index card on the activities board of the youth hostel. After I hitchhiked to an ATM machine to get two hundred dollars. After I packed for a four-day trip and locked up the rest of my stuff. After I got into his rusting…
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TV Time: “The One Where I Ugly Cry”
by Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez Watching TV keeps me soft. It helps me block out the commotion from the outside world and quiets the noise inside my head. On a daily basis, I overthink everything and dwell in the past while giving myself anxiety about what I haven’t accomplished today. My positionalities, as the oldest daughter…
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Point to Point
Fiction by Wilson Koewing Mike dropped Alison off at the Cypress Ranch Trailhead before dawn. There were no other cars in the parking lot. It was early October, and the peaks of the front range were lightly dusted with snow. She gazed at them, frosty and still in the distance and felt a lightness fall…
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The Full Horizon of Loss
a review of When These Mountains Burn by David Joy review by Chris McGinley David Joy’s newest novel is about loss. It’s about the loss of loved ones, the loss of landscape, the loss of one’s ethnicity, the loss of a way of life. Really, then, it’s about the full horizon of loss. What’s…
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How Should a Writer Be?: Burnt Out on the “Fuel of Darkness”
by Nick Rees Gardner “I had never wanted to be one person, or even believed that I was one, so I had never considered the true singularity of anyone else.” – Sheila Heti, How Should a Person be? In her New York Times article “Does Recovery Kill Great Writing,” Leslie Jamison mentions that she…