Category: Nonfiction

Essay: “Return to Pleasantville” by Tabitha Blankenbiller

In the 1998 film Pleasantville, one of my favorites according to my college MySpace page, an alternate-universe, black-and-white TV town undergoes a metamorphosis. Led by the arrival of achingly young Tobey McGuire and Reese Witherspoon from our world, the small world residents are introduced to the foreign concepts of sex, art, and literature—revolution by proxy,…
Essay: Zeke Jarvis’ “The Unintentional Dreads”

Not only do I remember the baby cats, but I remember how I heard about the baby cats. Actually, I remember that better than I remember the baby cats, which I didn’t see that much. It was the guy’s girlfriend that asked, “Don’t you think the baby cats are gross?” I stared at her until…
“Dr. Mario or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ascension of Video Games into a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry That Will Consume Us All,” an essay by Salvatore Pane

I I convinced my parents to buy me a subscription to Electronic Gaming Monthly in 1997. I was thirteen years old and had just saved up to buy the original PlayStation, a console so futuristic with its built-in CD player that I moved my yellowed Super Nintendo and collection of Japanese role-playing games to my grandmother’s basement…
“Curating,” an essay about the love poem by J. Bradley

Curating Inevitably, love fails, through break ups, divorce, or death. For most, this is incredibly hard to swallow, except for the poet who continues to write love poems. The concern from some potential partners is that they will become fodder, research, like instead of fucking them behind the stacks in some unused part of the…
Postmail with Chloe Caldwell

Chloe Caldwell lives in upstate New York. Her first book of essays, Legs Get Led Astray, was released by Future Tense Books in April 2012. Excerpts can be found on The Rumpus, SmallDoggies, and Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood. She works at a music store and writes a column called “Love & Music” for The Faster Times. She hosts the…