-
Altered Earths: Beyond Dystopia
Tackling the Narrative Challenges of Climate Change, On and Off the Page By S.E. Hartz This past weekend, I coped with a particularly bad bout of climate anxiety by watching seven straight hours of Stranger Things. Something about witnessing a group of young kids repeatedly face down various iterations of the same catastrophe, beating back…
-
10 Steps to Getting Rid of the Ghost in Your House
Nonfiction by Maureen O’Leary Give away the twelve boxes of your dad’s clothes your mom packed for their move to assisted living where he only survives nine days after finally, painfully dying in hospice care which is nothing like the blissfully drugged good-bye you swear he was promised. His last night in the hospital before…
-
Soundscapes: Radio Lessons
by Erin Calabria The first time I heard the world through a field recorder, it was like falling into a parallel dimension. Here was another universe rubbing shoulders with ours, where everything looked the same but sounded completely different. Ears cocooned in heavy foam headphones, I slowly rotated the levels to pull this alternate reality…
-
Artful Academics: On Methods
by Brandy Renee McCann Among other hobbies, my stepdad, a teacher in our small community in West Virginia, had a side gig as a flea market entrepreneur—think Billy Ray Cyrus t-shirts and clip-on fans. For a number of years flea market paraphernalia was stored in the Book Room. When it was not needed as a…
-
Not Everything is Gone Forever
by Gabino Iglesias I love many things about writing, and one of them is that, once something is done, you can always go back and reread a line, a paragraph, a chapter. Life moves at breakneck speed and everything—life, love, happiness, depression, friendship, pleasure—is ephemeral, but once a book is in print, once it’s a…
-
WHY I AM NOT (and am)
by Jane Hammons Decades ago, when I was earning a teaching credential at UC Berkeley, I was assigned a class of graduating high school seniors who were not going to graduate unless they passed a writing proficiency exam. Students from many backgrounds and dispositions filled this classroom: the school bully; depressed students unable to complete…
-
Throwing Pennies
Creative Nonfiction by Cassie Mannes Murray When the ultrasound technician adjusted the wand and said, “oop, it’s a boy” my first thought, the first thing I said to my partner in the deliberately shadowed room was, “how do we raise a non-toxic white boy in the South?” It was my immediate and most primary concern.…
-
If It Plays in Peoria: A Glossary of Midwestern Survival
Creative Nonfiction by Megan Cannella saying, I used to date a lot of managers of strip clubs for a while verb meaning to have tried too much meaning to have cowered in ways that surprised you meaning to have smelled like fried food more frequently than is comfortable meaning…
-
Sedona
Creative Nonfiction by Hannah Grieco After Elane Johnson After I found his index card on the activities board of the youth hostel. After I hitchhiked to an ATM machine to get two hundred dollars. After I packed for a four-day trip and locked up the rest of my stuff. After I got into his rusting…