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Hair Like Sadness
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

Hair Like Sadness

by Patrick Rosal
1. My brothers got curly hair, though Mark, my younger brother keeps it cropped close. My older brother, Anthony, has big bushy hair. He’s been mistaken for Cuban, Puerto Rican, Native American, Samoan…once in a while they say he looks Filipino.   2. I once heard that Jesus would have...
Letter to a Future Lover
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

Letter to a Future Lover

by Ander Monson
You were my birthday present; you came to the door—no one else was home; you said “let’s celebrate.” We dropped acid and went to the friend with the nocturnal monkey-like animal and made love for hours. I fell totally, naively in love, so when you took me home in the...
The Fourth
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

The Fourth

by Jennifer Sinor
Choosing a booth, I usher my two boys into their seats. They bounce and squawk like tiny grackles, unable to settle. Happy Meals in Utah no longer come in the brightly colored cardboard boxes of my childhood with golden-arched handles and smiling Grimaces. I pull their meatless cheeseburgers from a...
A Letter to Updike
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

A Letter to Updike

by Gary Percesepe
Updike was in Ohio to give a reading at my university. I found him outside the bookstore signing books. There was a small line. We talked for a few minutes. That night I would attend his reading, which was held—where else?—in the gymnasium, with seats set up on the basketball...
To the National Endowment for the Arts
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

To the National Endowment for the Arts

by Justin D. Anderson
We need money. Sorry for the frankness, but I’m told obfuscation has no place in contemporary literature. I’ve also been dishonest pretty much my entire life, and I’m turning over a new leaf. My wife and I haven’t been able to quit smoking, but we’re trying. I don’t know about...
Tonight (the Big Dipper, You Leaving)
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

Tonight (the Big Dipper, You Leaving)

by Sean Prentiss
Tonight, the steps that lead from the porch to the gravel road groan one at a time. One at a time, these eleven cabin steps make such mournful sounds. The bottom step sings the saddest—then quiet footsteps on a gravel path. Tonight, the river runs slow (and black), and a...
Crush
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

Crush

by Ana Maria Spagna
At thirteen, I fell in love on Shasta Lake. If not love, then something that I couldn’t yet name, a dizzy weak-kneed rush that knocked me broadside the day I saw her leap Levi-clad from the shore and arise dripping, and I didn’t know what else to do but leap...
In Pennsylvania
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

In Pennsylvania

by Chuck Strangward
Chris broke his back in Pennsylvania. It happened before I met him, before he showed me with pride the SS uniform his grandfather had worn during WWII, before he tipped our Waffle House waitress a fifty-dollar bill. Before we ran out of crack cocaine. Before I came along for the...
Introducing Mother Nature
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

Introducing Mother Nature

by Michael J. Soloway
This is what my mother’s midlife crisis looks like: She’s on a stage at the Cross County Mall in West Palm, black wig nesting her head, black leotard hidden beneath a black-and-white checkered faux fur. I’ve drawn a tattoo on her left arm with a ballpoint pen while she’s thickened...
Mom, Fading in Character
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

Mom, Fading in Character

by Don Shea
LEGACY Appearances matter. Dress properly. Observe the social proprieties. Send thank you notes promptly. Be gracious and kind to all. Impeccable hygiene, please. Smile. It makes all the difference.   THE FALL My mom, at ninety-two, fell down a flight of marble stairs at an art exhibition and broke her...
Dropping Babies
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

Dropping Babies

by J.D. Schraffenberger
Newborns can only see as far as the distance between their mother’s nipples and her face. For weeks, touch is how they understand this bright new world. They feel the warm and the cold. They feel the suck of air scouring their flesh. Until the 1980s it was believed that...
A Brief Natural History of an Eighth Grade Girl
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

A Brief Natural History of an Eighth Grade Girl

by Sarah Freligh
The males [of many animal species]. . . continue to vie for the prize of siring offspring via the one-celled messengers of themselves they leave as a consequence of mating: their sperm. [1] Fuck is everywhere, scrawled in black felt pen on the stall walls of the third floor girls’...
Clean Dirt
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

Clean Dirt

by Leila Crawford
I’m sitting in the bathtub of 905 Kings Highway. We rent this tiny, yellow house. It’s a rancher with a rock garden my mom built. One of the neighbors has a tire swing. The boy who lives there is a few years older than me. He wears shiny Umbros. Scotty....
That’s All I Have, Your Honor
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

That’s All I Have, Your Honor

by Kate Hill Cantrill
You don’t write about me, he once complained. Or maybe twice, maybe he was always asking why he never landed on my page. You give me no trouble, I told him. You’re simply here whenever I check. Perhaps one day I’ll surprise you. That will be the day, I said,...
One Good Thing
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

One Good Thing

by Luke St. John
I am hiding behind the front seat of my mother’s Rambler with my cousin Nancy, because my father has come out of the house. He is standing on the porch by the kitchen door in his underwear, looking around. It is the middle of the afternoon. The last thing I...
The Catch
Current Issue / Issue 39 / Spring 2012 / Nonfiction

The Catch

by Melissa Cistaro
By the time they slid out of the cooler and onto our front porch, the ice surrounding their slippery bodies was nearly melted. “Six silver Steelhead. Fresh out of the Klamath River,” announced my mother. They were sterling, pewter, and black. Yellow-eyed and long as my legs. My mother pulled...
Latest Issue
May 2012 / Issue 39

May 2012 / Issue 39

May 6, 2012
We are pleased to present our new issue featuring sixteen sharp new essays.  Click here to see all of the new essays, or use the slider above.
Craft Essays

Craft Essays

May 6, 2012
In our Craft section, Tabitha Blankenbiller explores the difference between an MFA thesis and a book, Tarn Wilson explores the numerous pitfalls of writing about family, and Christin Geall interviews author and editor Kim Dana Kupperman.
Book Reviews

Book Reviews

May 5, 2012
In our newest issue, we have reviews of Kelle Groom’s I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl, Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, Julie Marie Wade’s Small Fires, Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, and Rosamond Bernier’s Some of My Lives.
Blog Post: Against Knowingly Changing the Truth

Blog Post: Against Knowingly Changing the Truth

February 1, 2012
I admire Jill Talbot for moving the debate on truth in nonfiction away from generalized and sometimes vague pronouncements. By providing actual examples of what she has done with her work and what she sees as suitable, we can finally discuss specifics.  (Yes, the writer and the fact-checker in our latest scandaldiscuss specifics, but the hyperbole...

 

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