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The Nitty Gritty: Interview with Paul Crenshaw
By Charlotte Hamrick Paul Crenshaw and I have at least one thing in common, we both grew up in a small, conservative, rural town in the American South. But while he was still a boy in the 1980’s, I was a young adult just moved to the big city. Our experiences during that time were…
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Soundscapes: Word Treasure
By Erin Calabria I am fifteen, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my bedroom with a book of poems in my hands. Because I am fifteen, I don’t talk to anyone. I spend much of my time alone in this room, but then again, I am not really there either. Instead, I am traveling between…
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Artful Academics: A Sermon and Prompt for An End Time
By Brandy McCann The world is changing. The wheel is turning. The tower is crumbling. It’s post-pandemic; it’s the dismantling of the old patriarchy; it’s little and big resistances to the-way-things-were everywhere. These are exciting times; these are scary times. We’ve been wandering around in the wilderness for nigh on 40 years now, and sometimes…
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My Rugby Life. My Writing Life.
By Chris McGinley I should’ve started earlier. I didn’t begin writing fiction until I was fifty. Yes, I’m pleased with what I’ve achieved so far. I’m thrilled to be included in writerly events, to exchange rejoinders with people way more talented than me–Bonnie Jo Campbell, Chris Offutt, Julia Franks, Silas House. And I’m over the…
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Lazy Days in a Tropical Haze
By Melissa Llanes Brownlee Have you ever wanted to run away to a tropical island? Laze away on a beach, sipping cold drinks, eating food made by someone else, listening to the tide roll in and back out again? I did just that. I flew to an island off the coast of Tokyo and for…
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Seventeen, locked up again
Creative Nonfiction by Carrie Lynn Hawthorne 1998 – Northridge Adolescent Psych Ward. Woke up in a Pepto Bismol pink room. The day before, my hospital roommate, Lucy, had found out she was pregnant. By her dad. When Lucy slept, she looked so much younger than fourteen. Too young to be motherless, with no home to…
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Healthy Habits: Intentional Steps Required
By Valerie Peralta When I started chronicling my journey toward healthier habits in Reckon Review, the stakes were high. I had eaten myself to high cholesterol and the largest pants size I had ever needed. Never one to embrace the phrase “it is what it is,” I did not want to take a spate of…
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Country Craft: Hello, darling.
By Stuart Phillips Our home in the country came complete with grapevines, gnarled roots thick enough you needed two hands to encircle them. These vines had seen things. However, fifteen years of neglect had left them exhausted and sprawling across a rickety system of rusted metal poles. They were, to put it mildly, unkempt. I…
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Heatwave
Nonfiction by Elizabeth Enochs The heat index is 113 when I take my lunch break and even on full blast my car’s AC is no match, and it’s not like I’m unaccustomed to heat — southeast Missouri rarely does “mild;” summers swelter and winters bite — but I’m thinking of those who don’t have AC,…