Category: Wind & Root

  • The Fractured Mirror: Taking Your Half with You

    By Edward Karshner During my 2022 summer fellowship at Berea College Special Collections and Archives, I nerded out over many variants of familiar folktales. I love the idea that stories and traditions continue to evolve, grow, change. One story, however, was new to me. It has haunted me ever since I read it. It’s a…

  • Healthy Habits: Not What You Might Think

    By VALERIE PERALTA I confess. On my journey to exercise consistently and eat what I should more often than not, I often focus more energy on exercise than nutrition. Yes, it’s easier for me to run five miles than it is for me to resist a double chocolate brownie smothered in hot fudge sauce and…

  • Country Craft: Look Up

    Remember the Big Picture in Revisions By Stuart Phillips About a hundred feet down a gentle slope from our house stands the remnants of a small orchard from the 1800s. When we moved in, all that remained were five apple trees, branches so tangled from years of neglect they were almost barren. I pruned them…

  • The Pie Was a Final Draft: A House on Fire

    By Michaella Thornton It’s a little after 8 p.m. and my cozy brick bungalow smells of my favorite recipe for chocolate chip cookies. While we may not have much, I can always whip up a little bit of magic on a Friday night as my six-year-old daughter builds new worlds out of little plastic bricks…

  • Buried Nitrogen: The Parallel Plot of Pawpaws and a Local Park

    By Sandra Barnidge I have become the proud keeper of an orchard. A real, living orchard. I am so thrilled about it I can barely breathe. Begrudgingly, I can admit that perhaps my orchard is not yet especially picturesque—in fact, when I show images of it to friends and family, I sense the concern for…

  • Flexing My Creative Muscles: Training to Failure

    By Melissa Llanes Brownlee I have been doing my yearly ukulele challenge for the month of September, where I am playing ten Elvis songs, some new to me, some not, and posting my videos on the place formerly known as twitter and my ukulele Instagram. These videos are not me showcasing my best. It’s just…

  • 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…

  • Artful Academics: A Sermon and Prompt for An End Time

    By Brandy McCann The world is changing. The wheel is turning. The tower is crumbling. It’s post-pandemic; it’s the dismantling of the old patriarchy; it’s little and big resistances to the-way-things-were everywhere. These are exciting times; these are scary times. We’ve been wandering around in the wilderness for nigh on 40 years now, and sometimes…

  • Parental Reckonings

    See The Sections: A How-To Guide To Giving Birth By Amy Barnes I give birth to my first words when I’m in kindergarten, three letter words that rhyme about baby kittens and mittens. My teacher pushpins the wobbly words with their crayon illustrations to a bulletin board with other stories. My high school creative writing…

  • How to get ahead (by really trying):

    An interview with debut novelist K.J. Micciche By Stuart Phillips This strikes me as a painfully believable story. That was the first line of my critique of K.J. Micciche’s first manuscript from her first workshop at the Fairfield University MFA program. Our group had exchanged excerpts, and we were plowing through in an effort to…