LONGFORM CREATIVE NONFICTION
Excerpts from The Space Between by Herb Harris
Prologue I must begin by telling you that I am Black. This is a very strange thing to have to say out loud. It is usually something self-evident that goes without saying. But my light skin and blur of…
Racing, Excerpt from My Heart Is a Bomb by Tori Malcangio
Here they are, the two men in my life who have stepped forward in an executioner’s line. We’ll take the shot, they’re saying, as they assume positions in twin chairs stationed in every cardiologist’s office we’ve visited since my…
Archipelagic by Elisabeth Vasquez Hein
Is your mom a mail-order bride? I was once asked by a classmate in fourth grade while we sat at our desks making fake nails out of Elmer’s glue squeezed into the hollow of our plastic rulers. No, of…
The Novel, The Map by Hannah Grieco
Content Warning—suicidal ideation in a child Right after my forty-sixth birthday, I begin writing a novel. It’s about a mother who loses all sense of personal identity while taking care of her very ill son. A mother who…
Pawn by Starr Davis
I am on the East Side of Columbus, Ohio. One street over from Lev’s Pawn Shop is an abandoned storefront where I met my ex-lover when we were in high school. He cuts hair now in a barbershop on…
Hott Lipps by Matthew Clark Davison
“Breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine. This is Hott Lipps. Anybody out there?” I release the button, light a cigarette, take a drag, then exhale. Today, no E., and almost nothing but static on the CB radio. The space heater tries, but…
This Shattering by Wiam El-Tamami
just before dawn I. It started in the daytime, my sister says, I remember the light. We were watching TV. Mama and Baba were in their room, asleep. We heard noises that sounded like fireworks. It happened at…
How We Carry the Weight of It by Will McMillan
We arrive in the raspberry fields when it’s dark. It’s dark when we pile out of our secondhand pickup. My father, my mother. My brother and me. It’s dark when we start walking the rutted, sopping dirt road that…
Split Ends by Rowan McCandless
When my mother died, I inherited a sizeable goldenrod-coloured envelope; inside, I discovered birthday cards given to me from family members throughout my childhood, handmade get-well cards crafted by classmates upon the occasion of having one of several surgeries…
The Babysitter by Andrew Borneman
“My memory serves me far too well.” —George Michael 1979 I’ve heard the story a hundred times. Fourteen phone call attempts before my mother snagged my brother’s first babysitter, Sarah, a quick-witted high school sophomore. She showed up from…