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Flexing My Creative Muscles: Video Game Edition
By Melissa Llanes Brownlee I am not a gamer. Not really. But I do play video games during my free time. And when I say video games, I mean those Triple A, holy crap, they are shooting at me, and I have to also manage my resources, and why am I doing this to myself,…
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The Artful Academic: Writing Unspeakable Moments
By Brandy Renee McCann Dissociation is a common experience among those of us who’ve experienced trauma. We’ve all experienced mild out-of-body experiences where we lose touch with the present moment—for example, zoning out during a conversation or binging on a TV series to get respite from a stressful period. Even intensely positive experiences can lead…
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Soundscapes: Music Practice
By Erin Calabria I can’t talk about music without talking about silence. During high school, when I began composing on the piano, I didn’t tell my teacher. This music wasn’t like anything I’d ever been assigned, the fingerings were meant to fit rather than strain my small hands, and everything was by ear. This music…
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I Wrestle, I Rant But Writing Has Agency And Completes What I Can’t
By Camille U. Adams Writing isn’t salvation. It doesn’t console. Writing isn’t alleviation. It doesn’t cajole trauma into being meaning. It isn’t healing. Writing isn’t freeing. Putting words on the page doesn’t seal the escaped-from yesterday. Not from pain that lingers, flares, and that chronically plagues. Penning words doesn’t rescue from trauma’s effects. Macbook on…
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Those Little Rising Lights
By Cathy Ulrich Every morning, it’s still dark when I wake. Even in the longest days of summer, I wake before the sun. In the dark, I can see the lights from town. The airport sits atop the horizon, all red and white blinking lights. Without my glasses, they are blur and shimmer, not quite…
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Where My Words Come From
By Damon McKinney Growing up on a reservation in central Oklahoma wasn’t inspiring, at least at the time. Having Sunday dinners at my grandparents simple two-bedroom home wasn’t either, nor were the late nights at the family honkytonk, or running the streets of my hometown. Yet, those core memories are the anchors of my work.…
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Solving for X: Word Problems for Novelists
By Tiffany Quay Tyson In elementary school, I sometimes[1] read novels behind my math book. The teacher would write multiplication tables on the chalkboard or drone on about common denominators while I was fully immersed in some story by Lois Duncan or Louise Fitzhugh or Judy Blume. What was the point of memorizing multiplication tables…