Category: Wind & Root

  • How Should a Writer Be?: GOOD, HARD WORK

    By Nick Rees Gardner My love for working class literature goes back to my preteen years when, over the summer, I rode with my dad to mid-Ohio car dealerships where we’d repair car interiors and windshield chips. We walked the hot asphalt and sweated. I listened to my dad trade stories with smarmy dealers and…

  • Artful Academics: On Entering the Conversation

    By Brandy Renee McCann I sat in the front row and waved my arm. I just couldn’t wait to share my opinion in class discussions. Hardly had another student began expressing themselves when my arm shot up with a half-baked reply. I had something to say and I wanted to say it as soon as…

  • Buried Nitrogen: The Tragedy of the Brussel Sprout

    by Sandra K. Barnidge It all went wrong because of the barbecue pit. Not because of the pit itself, a Texas-style brick barbecue built in the 1950s, but because of where the pit is located in my backyard: under the twin shades of a mature camellia and a scraggly dogwood. You see, the pit has…

  • Mother Road

    A Flash Fiction Collaboration with Process Notes By Amy Cipolla Barnes and Sara Hills Sally Any second now, Dad will turn the car around and drive back to the Gemini Giant where we left Mom on the side of the road. He’ll race down the highway, not caring about speed limits or police, knowing the…

  • Dinè Storyteller

    A Conversation with Sunny Dooley By Edward Karshner I met Sunny Dooley toward the end of my time working in the Pine Springs Community, on the Navajo Nation. I had spent nearly ten years learning about the inner workings of Dinè folk-metaphysics and culture. With Sunny, however, I learned about the power of story. And…

  • Reckoning Flash

    An Interview with Tommy Dean by Mandira Pattnaik I have been writing Flash Fiction for about three years now. As a new writer, I read a lot. Most literary magazines have archives that are free to read, and full of gorgeous pieces. I’ve learned structure and narrative nuances and have discovered some great Flash Fiction writers.…

  • Beginnings

    An Interview with Lyndsey Ellis by Michaella Thornton I had the good fortune of being introduced to Lyndsey Ellis’ phenomenal writing through a creative writing teacher and indie publisher we both love, Christi Craig of Hidden Timber Books. Once I read Lyndsey’s debut novel, Bone Broth, last summer, I was in awe of how Lyndsey…

  • The Story Behind the Idea

    An Interview with Edward A. Farmer by Stuart Phillips Edward A. Farmer’s novel, Pale (Blackstone 2020), follows the course of several years on a plantation in the Mississippi Delta, interweaving themes of race, power, and the stultifying effects of the inhabitants’ connection to the land. In the end, the novel plays out the entire Southern…

  • Flexing My Creative Muscles: Art Nights, Line Art, & Daily Doodles

    by Melissa Llanes Brownlee If I told you that I once got busted for doodling in my Composition Notebook in math class, my hearts carved into its speckled black and white cover, stars streaking across polynomials, dragons roaring at word problems I didn’t want to solve, would you believe me? Until that day, doodling in…

  • Healthy Habits: Interdependence

    by Valerie Peralta When my doctor’s phone number flashed on my caller ID a month after my biannual blood work I wasn’t worried.  “I’m sorry it took so long to call you with this information,” the nurse said. “I’m glad you didn’t call sooner,” I responded. She would have called immediately if the results had…