-
Rest
Creative Nonfiction by Dani Nichols The snow softens the sound of everything – the gate thuds instead of clanging, the horses’ feet clomp softly through the drifts. A week or two ago someone slid off the highway into a cow pasture – we heard sirens coming to help, but not the crash. Everything is muffled […]
-
Everything That Sinks Must Emerge
A Review of Kelly J. Ford’s Real Bad Things By Wiley Reiver As I made my way through Kelly J. Ford’s stellar second novel, I kept thinking of how much Flannery O’Connor would have enjoyed and appreciated this story. Now, stay with me here. I’m entirely confident that as an artist with a cogent, comprehensive […]
-
Jackalope Kings
Fiction by Libby Cudmore Bad news comes with a human messenger. Your Aunt Mo calls between spreadsheets and Zoom to tell you that your Uncle Pete was found dead in his apartment. No cause yet; could be a heart attack, could be pain pills, could be the guns he started stockpiling in these last few […]
-
Brutal and Beautiful
A REview of CHarles Dodd White’s Lambs of Men By Chris McGinley Novelist Charles Dodd White knows the Appalachian mountainside. He knows the flora, the fauna, the geography. He knows the waterways and the weather. He knows how the light hits the trees at different times of day, and the way the air of the […]
-
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 […]
-
What’s Mine and Yours
Creative Nonfiction by Sam DeLeo Our plan, if it could be called that, had been to catch a few long rides all the way to Los Angeles. Once there, we’d lounge poolside for the holiday weekend at the home of Will’s wealthy family, who were, according to him, direct heirs to the Hilton Hotel fortune. […]
-
It Never Leaves
A review of Curtis Ippolito’s Burying the Newspaper Man By Justin Lee There is a line from a City & Colour song that kept coming to mind while reading this story. It goes: “A haunted man who can’t outrun his ghosts. They’re in my skin and my bones.” I feel like that is a perfect […]
-
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: […]
-
Back the Blue
Fiction by Anthony Neil Smith Back the blue? Fuck yeah, I back the blue. You saw the flag waving out front of the house? Black and gray Amer’can flag, blue line running through it. I’ve got two more on my truck. Bumper sticker, too. Oh, and the tattoo. See? I’ll flex it for you. I […]