Reckon Review

Tag: Wind & Root

  • 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…

  • 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:…

  • Adversity and The Artist: The Persistent Myth of Inspirational Suffering

    By Barlow Adams There’s a certain hubris in agreeing to pen a column about writing through adversity. It’s an invitation to the powers that be to take you down a notch. Let me tell you, those bastards listen. In the months since I signed on to write this column it’s been an onslaught of death,…

  • TV Time: Learning About Narrative Structure from a Book to TV Adaptation

    By Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez I spent the summer reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. I read a chapter or two every night for about three months with the intention of watching the novel’s TV adaptation immediately afterwards. The novel and subsequent TV show follow a Korean family living through Japanese rule in Korea, their immigration…

  • 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.…