Reckon Review

Category: Wind & Root

  • WRITING THROUGH ADVERSITY IN THE POST-TWITTER AGE AND THE HEALING POWER OF LITTLE STORIES | By Barlow Adams

    Few things are as daunting as a blank page or an empty screen, the sheer weight of expectation lurking in all that white space can be crushing. It’s a heaviness that settles in your chest, threatens to cramp your fingers, daring you to prove you have the words, that you’ve still got it, whatever it…

  • PARENTAL RECKONINGS: Lassie, there’s a writer in a well!

    By Amy Barnes I have NOT been writing. I have managed to dig myself a well in my sleep. There’s dirt under my dream fingernails. I’m tired. I’m thirsty. My thoughts feel dry. My nightly goal is to find a well of creativity I’ve been told exists somewhere, but I’ve only managed to locate a…

  • THE FRACTURED MIRROR: Craft it Loud

    By Edward Karshner When someone asks me what I do, I fight the urge to say “cowboy.” I usually say, “I teach.” I never lead with “I’m a writer.” I never feel comfortable with that particular job. It’s my favorite. Not my favorite to talk about. Eventually, I confess, and the next question is, “what…

  • HEALTHY HABITS: What I Need

    By Valerie Peralta April marked one year in my position as the coordinator of a college writing center. In the past 12 months I’ve become adept at using Microsoft Teams, developed an attitude of tolerance toward AI as a tool, and gained the trust of my team of tutors as well as several students and…

  • BURIED NITROGEN: Transplant Shock | by Sandra K. Barnidge

    Finding new forms for old ideas Two years ago, I wrote a column for Reckon Review about planting pawpaw seeds and watching them sprout. I read that column aloud at an arts festival, and a man approached me afterward, offering to dig up some larger pawpaw trees from his property to transplant onto mine. I…

  • COUNTRY CRAFT: What does it matter?

    By Stuart Phillips “Thank you for your service.” I have a viscerally ambivalent reaction when someone says that to me. Sure, I spent over a decade in the Army as a small cog in the Big Green Machine. I understand that part of my discomfort with the rote patriotism of these throwaway thanks is my…

  • ARTFUL ACADEMICS | By Brandy Renee McCann

    Somewhere In Time: Writing The Imagined Future In November, the planet Pluto entered the sign of Aquarius and it will remain in that sign until 2043. I don’t want to write about astrology, but given the chaos of the last month, it’s worth mentioning as a thought experiment. Pluto (think underworld) is known as the…

  • MUSINGS FROM NATURE: Finding Our Voice

    By Susan Schirl Smith Decades ago, I returned home from an evening out dancing at a student union pub. The door to my college dorm room was slightly ajar, unusual noises coming from inside. I expected to see my roommate there as I entered. But it was empty. Standing in the middle of the room,…

  • PARENTAL RECKONINGS: Uncooked Writing and Parenting

    By Amy Barnes A woman in a gorgeous fall suit once handed me a package of uncooked hot dogs, in an elementary school hallway. Like we were spies exchanging slimy secrets. After hugging her kid, she ran out the side exit door, high heels clacking. There’s a parent discourse raging about room moms and parties.…

  • ADVERSITY: Art as Resistance in the Misinformation Age

    By BARLOW ADAMS “During the Vietnam War… every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”—Kurt Vonnegut It’s a…