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Country Craft: Sometimes they die. Sometimes they come back again.
By Stuart Phillips Two years ago, as the leaves on the sumacs began to blaze and my morning walks began calling for a sweatshirt, I dug up the dozen Chinese peonies from the shaded front of my house. They were easily ten years old, so it was a task, even with soft dirt full of…
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The Community Cash Ghost: Fiction by Katy Goforth
Mama had parked the car a good while ago. We had been sitting here sealed up inside, marinating in the heat. I peeled my thighs off of the plastic seat cover. My sweat like glue making my skin feel as if it was left on the seat cover instead of my thigh. Mama’s Slim 100…
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Artful Academics: About Time
By Brandy Renee McCann I found myself on the front porch of my mom’s house, watching her do laundry in a wringer washer circa 1993. We had rusty water from a bad well. So as not to stain our clothes, my mom caught rainwater in great big barrels and heated it on the stove top,…
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Ghosts: Creative Nonfiction by Meredith McCarroll
Turning my rental car toward the lake, the road has been widened and the house where Amity grew up is nothing. A spot between roads. The gravel lot where I used to park is a condominium now, so I make my own spot in the grass. I prop my foot onto the tire to tighten…
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The Nitty Gritty Interview with Christy Tending
By Charlotte Hamrick Christy Tending’s High Priestess of the Apocalypse (ELJ Editions, 2024) is a unique collection of flash memoirs that weaves together threads of climate change, activism, parenting, personal reflection, trauma, grief, and healing. Christy freely opens her heart and invites the reader in as she shares her life experiences, the wonderful and the…
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A Woman of Childbearing Age: Fiction by Rebecca Long
You take off your boots and socks first. Then your jeans and sweater. Should you leave on your underwear and bra? It’s never clear. You fold your clothes neatly on the only chair in the room and put on the flimsy gown, open side in front, wrapping it tightly around your body. You wonder how…
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My Mother, My Father, My Pen
By Sacha Bissonnette I’m one of those writers who needs to nail down a title before moving forward with a piece. I know that there are many better writers out there who have left their masterpieces untitled until they’ve penned the last sentence. It’s a mental thing, a hang up thing, but without a title,…
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Destin: Fiction by Joe Kapitan
Ryan is always too far. Today he swims out past the second line of sandbars and breakers, fading from view, his head a black dot amidst the silver sunspots dancing on the waves. Ellie is different. Deliberate. Ellie’s pale skin flares red in the fierce June sun of northern Florida. The wrinkled, orange-haired woman who…
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Embracing the Absurd
A Review of Anna Dickson James’ Boys Buy Me Drinks to Watch Me Fall Down By Alex Carrigan In her short story collection Boys Buy Me Drinks to Watch Me Fall Down, Anna Dickson James brings together 18 stories that examine the mental, emotional, and social oddities of gender roles in the traditional and speculative…