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Fly and Fly
Creative Nonfiction by Miriam Gershow I am six and don’t know how to ride a bike. I won’t know how for seven more years. Children will call out names as they pass my mother holding onto the back of my banana seat, me wobbly and long-limbed, hunched over handlebars on the sidewalk in front of…
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Soundscapes: Word Treasure
By Erin Calabria I am fifteen, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my bedroom with a book of poems in my hands. Because I am fifteen, I don’t talk to anyone. I spend much of my time alone in this room, but then again, I am not really there either. Instead, I am traveling between…
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My Rugby Life. My Writing Life.
By Chris McGinley I should’ve started earlier. I didn’t begin writing fiction until I was fifty. Yes, I’m pleased with what I’ve achieved so far. I’m thrilled to be included in writerly events, to exchange rejoinders with people way more talented than me–Bonnie Jo Campbell, Chris Offutt, Julia Franks, Silas House. And I’m over the…
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Seventeen, locked up again
Creative Nonfiction by Carrie Lynn Hawthorne 1998 – Northridge Adolescent Psych Ward. Woke up in a Pepto Bismol pink room. The day before, my hospital roommate, Lucy, had found out she was pregnant. By her dad. When Lucy slept, she looked so much younger than fourteen. Too young to be motherless, with no home to…
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Heatwave
Nonfiction by Elizabeth Enochs The heat index is 113 when I take my lunch break and even on full blast my car’s AC is no match, and it’s not like I’m unaccustomed to heat — southeast Missouri rarely does “mild;” summers swelter and winters bite — but I’m thinking of those who don’t have AC,…
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The Trophy on My Wall
Creative Nonfiction by Don Alexander I was sitting on a log behind a makeshift blind I had fashioned out of dead limbs and brush. My Winchester 30/30 was resting on a horizontal limb just in front of me. This deer stand was thirty yards above a heavily used game trail in a little mountain hollow…
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Today, Your Secrets are Safe with Me
Creative Nonfiction by Cheryl Skory Suma It made me feel worse, talking about you as if we’d known one another. Everyone assumed we did; what mother and daughter don’t know each other’s stories? All I knew was how important today was for you; how much you needed the approval of the people in that room,…
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Rest
Creative Nonfiction by Dani Nichols The snow softens the sound of everything – the gate thuds instead of clanging, the horses’ feet clomp softly through the drifts. A week or two ago someone slid off the highway into a cow pasture – we heard sirens coming to help, but not the crash. Everything is muffled…
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What’s Mine and Yours
Creative Nonfiction by Sam DeLeo Our plan, if it could be called that, had been to catch a few long rides all the way to Los Angeles. Once there, we’d lounge poolside for the holiday weekend at the home of Will’s wealthy family, who were, according to him, direct heirs to the Hilton Hotel fortune.…