LONGFORM CREATIVE NONFICTION
Black Tax: The Back-to-Back-to-Back Breaking of Black Hair, Black Bank Accounts, and Black Beauty Salon Culture by Exodus Oktavia Brownlow
Spring 2025 When did Black women get so impatient with our own selves? Is what I think alongside sitting underneath a hooded hair dryer for thirty minutes, the plastic cap bubbling a brewing smell of onion juice, garlic, and…
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The Way Seahorses Hang On by Anne Panning
I. Rain gush-pummels our car. Whippet wipers slash frantically at the whitecaps. Off to Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, to watch our daughter, Lily’s, volleyball tournament. It’s the weekend before Thanksgiving, and our son, Hudson, is meeting us there from Pittsburgh. …
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Drawing Breath in Chapters by Rose Gerszberg
A stowaway made the long trip to the United States with my mother, father, and me. Unbidden and unticketed, tucked into the pocket of a gray overcoat, chilled by early fall’s ocean breezes, pushed back by hope—grief nevertheless made…
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Mangled Pike Spotted by Kiddie Pool by Faye Wikner
When the fish is dead, it lies in the shallow of water that never goes away, in the dirt, the remnants of blood from my forefinger where I pricked myself four times over, maybe some from that pike, too.…
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Appetites by Ann Levin
I was halfway through the show when I first saw the picture, hanging all alone on a wall. I knew I should hurry up, had other things to do. But something about the size and the color drew me…
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The Art of Crafting a Dating App Profile by Anna Chotlos
Do I “heart” this? My finger hovers over the outline of a heart beside a photo of a curly-haired woman grinning, her arms wrapped around two tan dogs. It’s a Friday night, a few months after I moved to…
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The Lighthouse Keepers by Jen Colclough
“You’re a highly intelligent individual, and I’m sorry, but you probably know already that intellect and depression often run together.” The school counsellor raises her hand up and down to simulate a wave. “Your thoughts and your moods move…
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Little Boy Ghost by Ira Sukrungruang
Since we’ve moved to England for the year, my son Bodhi fears being alone. He can’t verbalize what it is he fears. Everywhere we go he follows, hand linked into an arm or fingers pinching the fabric of a…
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Orchid, Excerpt from Orchid: A Memoir by Chaya Bhuvaneswar
“Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavor to trace its imperfections, its perversions.” ―Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks Chapter One: Orchid Tattoo 1. …granulation tissue Granulation tissue is cell growth, after…
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Bus Stop by Gabe Montesanti
The nurse processing my intake at the psychiatric hospital looked like the kind of person with whom I would strike up a conversation while waiting for a drag show. Everything about her seemed to match, down to the color…
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