Reckon Review

Category: Wind & Root

  • The Pie Was a Final Draft: Lilacs

    By Michaella Thornton Because I’m a plant-obsessed dork, five years ago I wrote an Instagram ode to a Miss Kim lilac bush in my backyard: [In 2016] this lilac bush was felled by a neighbor’s dead tree, which fell on our back porch, too. The tree ruined our fence, and, I thought, my beloved lilac…

  • The Off-Season: How To Survive The Writing Winters 

    By Wendy Newbury Every February, March, and April, I step into the role of general manager for my NFL team, a coveted position that passionate fans like myself eagerly embrace. Dubbed ‘armchair GMs,’ we immerse ourselves in every pivotal off-season event, hoping each move inches our team one step closer to the Lombardi Trophy. But…

  • Strike a Minor Chord

    By C.W. Blackwell I was thirteen when I strummed my first guitar chord—a G major—on my father’s 12-string Epiphone acoustic. He’d started over with a new family in Santa Rosa just a few hours north of where I grew up, and I was visiting for summer break when he suggested I learn a few chords.…

  • The Craft of Listening: The Story’s Unique Scale

    By Koss A few years ago, while in deep grief, I became aware that stories and poems reside in my body, not just in my head. A poem might wake me up in the form of a low thrum in the night. Sometimes every beat of the poem would come before the words arrived–as a…

  • Story Crafting Below the Surface

    By Jolene McIlwain Once upon a time, I could literally see inside people. Before I tried and failed at my dream of becoming a published poet, before I wrote a novel, and a group of short stories (the former sits unpublished in a drawer and the latter was published last year as the story collection,…

  • Yarns: On Making Perfectionism Work for You

    By Meagan Lucas I hate it when editors publish themselves—especially in anthologies, but that’s another column—and I vowed when I started this mag that I wasn’t going to do that. But then I had an idea for this essay, and I thought a craft column isn’t as self-indulgent as publishing my own fiction, right? Plus,…

  • Buried Nitrogen – Dead Wood Falling: A Snow Moon Noir

    By Sandra K. Barnidge Our Leyland cypress died. All at once, it seemed, almost overnight. One week, the evergreen branches were soft, supple, and verdant — it had been our outdoor Christmas tree, and we’d decorated it with shiny colored balls and a pinecone topper. But last summer’s drought had weakened it, and a fungus…

  • The Pie Was a Final Draft: Homecoming

    By Michaella Thornton Last month, at age 45, I attended my first Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, and it was glorious. I sang karaoke two nights in a row with writers I love and admire (Salt-n-Pepa’s “None of Your Business” and Wilco’s “Heavy Metal Drummer”…

  • In Search of Magic

    By Jamie Etheridge I’m writing late into the afternoon when I see them. A fluffle of eastern cottontails scampering across the road. They move like raindrops on water. Plop. Bound. Leap. A wiffle of unreality. Midway, the mother rabbits pause. They rear up on hind legs. Freeze frame, except for twitching noses and ears alert.…

  • Adversity: On Writing Yourself As the Reluctant Villain

    By Barlow Adams Invariably, my best stories are the ones that share some part of me I’d rather not, some aspect of me I wish didn’t exist at all. As a result, my “biggest” most dramatic essays are frequently the hardest for me to write. This leads to an infuriating dichotomy where I often tell…