LONGFORM CREATIVE NONFICTION
Blackbird Dreams by Meg LeDuc
Content Warnings—mental illness, suicidal ideation Close to midnight, I approach the Michigan-Ohio border, headlights flashing around me like starry pinpricks in the vast, dark tunnel along southbound I-75. It’s November 2015—a cold, clear-heaven night—and I’m clocking ninety miles per…
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Choose Your Own Adventure For ’80s Kids by Paul Crenshaw
You are walking home from school. The year is 1983 and you’re 9 or 11 or 13, some awkward age when even the air hurts your thin skin. Maybe it’s the hole in the ozone the news is just…
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some things I knew by age seven by Shaina Phenix
In every story we are precocious, fast, little mothers, little women living in questionable child bodies. Men stalk the straps of our training bras sliding off our shoulders. Our mothers scold us for getting ruined or dirty—always reminding us of…
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The Hierarchy of Soup by Amber Wong
Fan Jou Suri Served at the end of a meal, fan jou suri isn’t a dessert. Or, technically, a soup. But for my brother and me, youngsters living in Boston in the early 1960s, parents pinching every penny, fan…
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Father/Figure by Andrea Avery
1. Ambigram In isolation, I mark time by the movement of sunlight across my walls and floors. I awake each morning to the desert sun blazing through the east-facing back door. The sun conspires with the automatic pool cleaner…
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Stumbling over History by Kenny Fries
In May 1939, Adolf Hitler received a request from the parents of Gerhard Kretschmar, who was born blind and missing limbs. The Kretschmars wanted to kill their child. Hitler authorized his personal physician, SS officer Dr. Karl Brandt, to…
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Catalogue for a Coming of Age by Liz Harmer
000 Generalities In 1999, I worked two jobs and had just gotten out of the hospital. A few afternoons a week and on Saturdays I shelved books at a small branch of the public library, as I had been…
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What You Don’t Know by Clare Fielder
I started boxing because of writing. I was working on a novel about young queer women being angry and boxing their way out of their small town. I needed terminology, so I went to a boxing training class. I…
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The Ties that Bind by Tammy Delatorre
On the Big Island of Hawai‘i, Honokaa is the town tourists drive through to get to Waipi‘o Valley. At the top of the valley is a scenic overlook, which provides an unobstructed view to the black sand beach, river,…
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Face, Velvet, Church, Daisy, Red by Marilyn Hope
A woman in a spruce-blue tracksuit enters my bedroom with a pickax and chips a hole in my wall. She collects smooth, fist-sized rubies from between the studs and places them in a music box, ribboned with dark grain,…
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