Reckon Review

Category: Wind & Root

  • The Fractured Mirror: Winter Solstice, Christmas, and the Axes of Time

    By Edward Karshner In the volumes written about the folklore of Christmas, what gets lost is that Christmas, like its cousin winter solstice holidays, is about the restructuring of time. We never really stop to consider that time, like folklore itself, is a construct orienting us to a world that seems, in the words of…

  • Healthy Habits: When Disciplines Meet

    By Valerie Peralta Every morning when I open my eyes, I know I need to exercise. A three-mile walk, a HIIT workout, and some stretching or yoga. But my running shoes sit in my closet. My workout clothes remain in their respective drawers. And I don’t know exactly when any of this physical activity will…

  • Outsider Perspectives: Matchmaking for the Outsider

    By Mandira Pattnaik When I signed up to be a Columnist for Reckon Review, it was a leap of faith for me. I’ve written fiction and poetry, but columns? It was a November day like this, exactly a year ago, and whoops! I had committed to it! I guess I’d trusted my instincts. Several columns…

  • The Pie Was a Final Draft: On Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls and the Root of All Suffering

    By Michaella Thornton Last Thursday my work hosted a Great Pumpkin Bakeoff, and while I’m usually not one to brag or indulge in trash talk, I knew I would mop the floor with the competition. Ah, hubris. How easy you are to spot in others but not in myself. While I faithfully followed the tried-and-true,…

  • Country Craft: Crafting a Legacy

    By Stuart Phillips Recently, a writer called my work “honest and soulful.” That was touching, especially since I didn’t know he had read anything of mine. The realization that you never know who reads, and likes, your work reminded me of when I came home to Mississippi after my first hitch in the Army. One…

  • Buried Nitrogen: The Parable of the Persimmon

    By Sandra K. Barnidge The persimmons on her tree were still green, but Cheryl the Neighbor told us to go for it anyway. “Before the critters get ’em,” she said. Possums had been spotted on a neighbor’s persimmon tree the week before. A raccoon family was prowling the neighborhood, too. It was now or never,…

  • Flexing My Creative Muscles: Playing the Ukulele, UAS, & 30-Day Challenges

    By Melissa Llanes Brownlee I know. I know. The ukulele, right? How stereotypically Hawai’ian of me. Would you believe me if I told you that I had never owned an ukulele in my entire life until I moved to Japan? Well, it’s true. I bought a $50 (well 5000 yen) ukulele around 2010 from a…

  • Altered Earths – Storyteller as Scientist: An Experiment in Four Variables

    By S.E. Hartz I want to write this essay as a scientist would. I do not come with a conclusive thesis but with a working theory and a hypothesis to guide my investigation. The theory: things I have learned or explored in the laboratory and field can guide my fiction in new directions. The hypothesis:…

  • Adversity and The Artist: The Persistent Myth of Inspirational Suffering

    By Barlow Adams There’s a certain hubris in agreeing to pen a column about writing through adversity. It’s an invitation to the powers that be to take you down a notch. Let me tell you, those bastards listen. In the months since I signed on to write this column it’s been an onslaught of death,…

  • TV Time: Learning About Narrative Structure from a Book to TV Adaptation

    By Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez I spent the summer reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. I read a chapter or two every night for about three months with the intention of watching the novel’s TV adaptation immediately afterwards. The novel and subsequent TV show follow a Korean family living through Japanese rule in Korea, their immigration…