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The Fractured Mirror: Writing Out of the Dark Valley
By Edward Karshner I write because I like stories. I like reading old stories and finding new meaning in them. In my day job as a folklorist, I study how storytelling influences behavior. The fancy term for this is the study of “cognitive scripts,” how stories become the knowledge we use to understand and navigate…
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Norbert Pearlroth Might Have Been a Lawyer
By Tony Woodlief Two days before he blisters Michael’s legs with a cigarette lighter, Ricky drives them all to Jupiter to see the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. Believe It or Not comics are Ricky’s chief reading material. While other men discuss newspaper headlines, Ricky recites oddities documented by Mr. Robert Ripley. “They went…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: Geologic Time
By Michaella Thornton A long time ago I dated a man whose brother described him as “moving in geologic time.” As someone who had majored in anthropology and also studied geology, I was both baffled and amused by this description because humanity is but a blip in the more enduring measures of time. What a…
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Ten Minutes of Pride
Creative Nonfiction by Alina Zollfrank Saturday, 11:03 am: We could frame this moment. It’s the best humanity has to offer. A loud procession, planned and jumbled, approaches from downtown. On the sidelines, acquaintances hug and hand each other multicolored flags and homemade buttons. Strangers nod amiably, raise optimistic thumbs, smile gently with their eyes. A…
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There Are Worse Things in The World Than Inappropriate Sex
A Review of Mary Rechner’s Marrying Friends By Olga Katsovskiy Mary Rechner’s Marrying Friends novel-in-stories invites the reader into the intimate lives of two sisters, whose friends and dysfunctional families come together at a funeral and a wedding – where time stands still. Unlike her debut short story collection, Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women,…
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Healthy Habits: Reckoning with Fear
By Valerie Peralta My troubles melt away in water. Whether swimming laps in a pool, floating on my back in the Gulf of Mexico, or jumping waves in the Atlantic, I am mentally transported, simultaneously at peace and filled with joy. In fact, my love for the water is what drew me to triathlon. Little did I know…
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For Ethan
Fiction by Grace Buckner I’m only telling you this because it’s important. After I’m gone, there’re some things I need folks to understand, things they don’t understand right now. I’m standing in the kitchen watching this happen and it’s all these stories that shouldn’t be all mixed up together, but I love my son and…
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Calling Card
By Sean Jacques Doe Run was supposed to be a movie. My movie. My meal ticket into Hollywood glamor and fame. You’ve heard the story: the long dark walk down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I. EXPOSTION: I grow up as a rowdy country kid in the Missouri Ozarks, flunk out of state college, migrate…
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Sometimes when I’m driving I get a call
Creative Nonfiction by Pat Foran and I don’t pick up. Not when I’m driving. I don’t look at the phone. Not when I’m driving. If they want to reach me they’ll leave a message, I sometimes think. So I let it ring. I let the ring fall I let it fall down this ring it…
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Love and Blood
A Review of Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit By Maud Lavin Morgan Talty’s novel, Fire Exit, is about ill fits among blood, belonging, and love. Set on the Penobscot River with the Reservation on one side and extraneous whites on the other, the story is also about parenting, about stepfathers raising kids with devotion, about missing…