Category: Creative Nonfiction
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“An Offering of Space”: An Essay for Bad Survivalist by Whitney Kerutis
My body wakes me one morning as a crater collecting water. I ring out the stiffness, twisting my torso left and right. Keep my eyes shut. Hold myself like a spouse whose body is easy to swallow. * One morning, a woman seated two rows ahead of me on the bus tries to find the…
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“Debt,” a Flavor Town USA nonfiction essay by Christopher Bowen
Are you hungry the way I used to be? When I was a culinary student, I was always hungry and thought people will need to eat, too. They will always need me here for that and I’d always have a job because of that. I wrote and traveled, too. These were a few of the…
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Essay: “You’re Not Dead” by Reverie Koniecki
Don’t you think it’s creepy that your name is written there and you’re not dead? I ask. Why do you say that? my mother responds. I guess I’m just not ready to die, I say. We are looking down at my sister’s new gravestone. It is a rectangle with her name, birthdate, and of course…
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Flash Nonfiction: “Cancer is missing” by L Scully
I You meet them when they get off the metro. You can’t tell who they are because you’ve only seen photos of them online, but the one with the mullet and 80s windbreaker comes up to you easily enough. They look better online. They’re standing with a man and speaking in your not-quite second language…
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Essay: “Mohammed and Me” by Mandy Shunnarah
Our eyes met in the rearview mirror and he looked at me appraisingly. “You look Middle Eastern.” This would have been odd coming from anyone else, but my Lyft driver who’d just picked me up from a watch party for the 2018 midterm elections—with his keffiyeh scarf draped over the passenger seat headrest and his…
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“‘Survivor Lit vs. Adventurer Lit’: The Varying Aesthetics of Forced Migration vs. Voluntary Travel” by Cristina Deptula for Bad Survivalist
More people are refugees than ever before, and more people are able to publish and read books than ever before. Many other brilliant essayists have looked at how the dislocation of migration has showed up in the form as well as the content of literature. Here, in this piece, through interviews with three emerging authors…
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“Targets,” a Bad Survivalist essay by Kay Smith-Blum
Who breaks their arm planting bulbs? Well, technically, I was retrieving bulbs, from a box on the other side of the low-rise-industrial-wire fence they put up around small urban gardens at street level to keep out the dogs that don’t keep out the dogs. Why build a fence just high enough for me to trip…
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“‘The Will to Survive Is a Force That Never Discriminates’: Literature and Global Environmental Refugees and Other ‘Forsaken’ Peoples” by Cristina Deptula for Bad Survivalist
More people are refugees than ever before, and more people are able to publish and read books than ever before. Many other brilliant essayists have looked at how the dislocation of migration has showed up in the form as well as the content of literature. How can writers most effectively craft pieces that inspire people…
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Lee Patterson: Two Essay Poems for Bad Survivalist
an essay about funerals I want to set a car on fire, set guns on fire, set love on fire—grow skin so crimson we call it fire. I want to grow a more giving heart, set it on fire, watch what crumbles crumble. trumpets blare against the wall. a temple falls, a medicine cabinet cracks…
