Category: Creative Nonfiction

“Cartesian Ghost Story,” an essay by Jeff Chon

I should avoid the old neighborhood, but I have nowhere else to be right now. It’s five seventeen p.m.—the day care closes at six—and the kids hate it when I pick them up early, when they have to say good-bye to their friends. Whether I like it or not, I have some time to kill,…
Six Essays from Self-Erasing Portrait by Joe Hall

Smoker’s Lounge Take the inscrutable diners and staff behind the plate glass of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” Take the plate glass and bury it deep in the street-like incandescent night of a factory. Replace the counters with folding tables. Make everyone older. Give each one a newspaper and a cigarette to pull on then smudge the…
Essay Hybrid: “Introduction” by JoAnna Novak

IBegin with a lie. Life-stuck or stasis, miles orminds: unleash the lies.Bark them off. Begin un-urgent, unringed, grub-nailed and urgey, youngenough to be buyable,looking on labels. IIOnce I wended. A toA; after that—a curvet,a barreling. Set fromthe capital and droveborders over-fast,over-hard, o’er thevalley; his old car wasrazed, a bothered stateof dust. Mountainsabutted my path andrunaway…
Side A Featured Essay: “Mercantile” by Jennifer Fliss

I am in a store that calls itself a mercantile. The floors are a bleached wood. It smells like patchouli with an overlay of dryer sheets. There’s a vast selection of essential oils. I smell them all until I smell them all as I move to the back of the store. I run my fingers…
Essay: “Proving Our Salt” by Sarah Fonseca

From the beginning, there was a lot of talk about his hands; so much that a particularly religious eavesdropper might’ve mistaken a conversation about him—transpiring during Easter, Ascension, or an average Friday train commute—for one about his antithesis, the martyred Jesus Christ. Coined by the clairvoyant writer Graydon Carter in 1989, “the short-fingered vulgarian” nickname…
Essay: Erin Gunther’s “On Dancing”

I watched the two of them dancing on the table, my father sitting on the couch opposite the spectacle, looking utterly horrified. My mother was dancing with a mutual friend of my father’s, Helene. They had been drinking all night. I was only nine years old and had not often been around drunken adults. My…
Side A Featured Essay: Harmony Neal’s “Allyship”

A response to the piece by the same name by Will Waller Oppressor: I’m here to help! I’m not like the other people from my group. I believe in equality for all. Oppressed Person: You’re standing on my neck. O: No I’m not! Wait, what? OP: You’re standing on my neck. Could you please get…
Essay: “A View from Across the Pond” by Claudia White

Donald Trump’s first year in office as seen by an American living in Ireland. 01/04/2017 Donald Trump will be the President of the United States in less than three weeks. This horrifies and scares me but mostly makes me sad. I make jokes about him dying in bed but then my daughter says, “Pence…
Essay: “Seattle Women’s March, 2017” by Amberly Baker

We are perched at the top of a hill, waiting, feet already starting to ache against the pavement. In front of us is a traffic light barrier we are not yet allowed to pass. My hands shake as I move in a small circle, careful to keep to myself, careful not to bump into anyone…