Reckon Review

Tag: Creative Nonfiction

  • OUR BRIGHT FUTURE | Creative Nonfiction by Blue Guldal

    “Ain’t Montana preedy?” Cowboy said, sweeping his arms across the orange-pink sunset. We’d met him in a bar late afternoon. The girls called him Cowboy because of his hat and swagger. The girls and I were new scientists with promising futures, attending a prestigious undergraduate conference in Missoula. We’d just met earlier that day in…

  • MY THOUGHTS AS I SIT PROCRASTINATING IN THIS OFFICE CHAIR ON A FEBRUARY AFTERNOON | Creative Nonfiction by Laila Amado

    Dolphins dying in the Black Sea because the sonars of warships mess with their brains. Only a small percentage of deceased cetaceans wash up on the shores. The majority sink to the seabed, their lungs filled with water. Warfare as ecocide. Biomimicry. Micro drones becoming pollinators. The strange and quiet sadness of the world in…

  • NO TIME TO DIE | Creative Nonfiction by Brian Benson

    I was walking into the latest James Bond movie, hands and arms full of popcorn and frozen Junior Mints and foamy beer, when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I shuffled my snacks to my elbow pit, pulled out the phone and found a text from my aunt, asking if I’d talked to my mom.…

  • PARENTAL RECKONINGS: Uncooked Writing and Parenting

    By Amy Barnes A woman in a gorgeous fall suit once handed me a package of uncooked hot dogs, in an elementary school hallway. Like we were spies exchanging slimy secrets. After hugging her kid, she ran out the side exit door, high heels clacking. There’s a parent discourse raging about room moms and parties.…

  • ADVERSITY: Art as Resistance in the Misinformation Age

    By BARLOW ADAMS “During the Vietnam War… every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”—Kurt Vonnegut It’s a…

  • HEALTHY HABITS: Move With a Purpose

    By Valerie Peralta On my first day of acting class, the instructor asked my classmates and me – a hodgepodge of millennials and Gen-Xers – “What is acting?” After nodding to responses such as “a portrayal” and “a group of characters bringing a story to life,” Gail answered her own question: “Acting is action.” I…

  • MARKED | Creative Nonfiction by Summer Hammond

    “Out of all the boys, Summer, he’s the one you set your heart on?” Sliding down her sunglasses, my mother eyed me in the rearview mirror as we left for Luke Michael’s graduation party, a blue paisley gift bag perched on my lap. What my mother was really saying was, listen kid, you don’t stand…

  • IT’S FUNNY IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT | By Rob. D. Smith

    Sequential Art was my gateway into reading. And I loved to read. Nothing brought me more joy than exploring a fictional world that seemed more glorious than my own world. Comic books and comic strips just helped my already blossoming imagination with the art accompanying the words. Woeful Charlie Brown trying to get through childhood…

  • Ghosts: Creative Nonfiction by Meredith McCarroll

    Turning my rental car toward the lake, the road has been widened and the house where Amity grew up is nothing. A spot between roads. The gravel lot where I used to park is a condominium now, so I make my own spot in the grass. I prop my foot onto the tire to tighten…

  • Fire to Tend To

    I started writing because I wanted to cut out the pain that had been festering in my chest and put it on the table where all could see it clearly. I had just moved off to college and had left home for the first time in my life. My mother was struggling with opioid addiction,…