Reckon Review

Category: Nonfiction

  • MARKED | Creative Nonfiction by Summer Hammond

    “Out of all the boys, Summer, he’s the one you set your heart on?” Sliding down her sunglasses, my mother eyed me in the rearview mirror as we left for Luke Michael’s graduation party, a blue paisley gift bag perched on my lap. What my mother was really saying was, listen kid, you don’t stand…

  • 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…

  • Ball

    Creative Nonfiction by Zach Benak The first night of August I sat in the back of my mom’s Honda, heading home from Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. The setting sun reflected onto Papillion’s muddy creek and white stadium lights warmed the surrounding soccer and baseball fields busy with late-season games. I opened my phone…

  • Nude in a Naked City

    CREATIVE NONFICTION BY DENISE TOLAN It is 8:30 pm. The temperature is ninety-five degrees. Because it is early June, we locals still complain about the heat. Soon we will abandon clothing and hope and accept the drying earth and scalding sun as fact. Newcomers to San Antonio are often startled by our thick humidity and…

  • Changing the Story of Rejection

    Creative Nonfiction By Megan E. O’Laughlin Many years ago, I gave up on writing. I was only 25, floundering after years of travel post-college, and decided to get an MFA. After receiving a small pile of envelopes from various graduate schools, I quickly gave up. I shuffled the rejection letters into a little pile in…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Anti-Depression

    CREATIVE NONFICTION BY ASHLEY ESPINOZA I don’t want to write about my depression. I don’t want to make sense of it. Follow it around a path, a spiral. I don’t want to find the source of it. I want to wallow. To sink deep into it. I want to let it engulf me. To take…

  • Suing for Peace

    By Russell W. Johnson When I’m not busy trying to be a writer, I make my living as a lawyer. I know, I know. How original? Another John Grisham wannabe. I admit it has become kind of a cliche given the number of attorneys turned author. Scott Turow, Richard North Patterson, Meg Gardiner, Theodora Goss,…

  • When You Sell Mom’s Teeth

    Creative Nonfiction By Arlaina Tibensky When you finally get the guts to find Mom’s stash of 14k dental gold and look to cashing it in, you’re broke. When you hold the bridge in your palm, it’s heavier than it looks and the gold is dark and in need of a polish. When you breathe deep…