Ending in Laughter: On Grief & Trauma
At the end, there’s no answer, but ending in laughter and nostalgia leaves room for hope.
Paradise Block by Alice Ash
Ash’s stories begin as the Grenfell news story did: with a fire.
Where Systems Touch: The Self in Ecopoetry
So here I am attempting to name a thing I love, knowing full well I may not.
Magnolia Canopy Otherworld by Erin Carlyle
In Magnolia Canopy Otherworld, the debut collection from Erin Carlyle, this biblical origin story is both confirmed and upended.
Something Unseen Building: An Interview with Kelsey Ipsen
More than anything else, it is this natural ear for sounds that makes Kelsey’s fiction stand out; her characters and their movements are given form by it.
How These Words Lean on You: An Interview with Ben Purkert
The kind of ending that Purkert is in love with, is that most important part of a successful poem: the audible click of a final line.
Structure in Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World
Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World is a deceptively slim novel. Alternately referenced as narco-noir, myth, epic, and border story, the novel manages to fluidly traverse genres and structural layers in a mere 107-pages.
White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia by Kiki Petrasino
If you are Black and American, then you too might have a story similar to mine. A story whose blood origin begins with more questions than documented truth.
Searching for Symmetry: Ramifications by Daniel Saldaña París
In a house on a street in Colonia Educación in Mexico City on a Tuesday around midday, a mother makes the decision to leave her husband and children and never return, an action that leaves a distinct mark on the family members’ lives, like the crease left on a folded piece of origami paper.
Second-Hand
It was through second-hand books that I learned how to read for myself.
A Relief and a Horror
We’re better equipped now than perhaps ever before to empathize with and examine how Jackson conveys the Blackwoods’ sense of isolation, both social and physical, from their community.
Trace: An Interview with Melanie Figg
Melanie Figg’s new full-length poetry collection Trace gives voice to family, feminism, and individual history through the lens of art.
Echoes of The Three Marias in the #MeToo Movement
By delving into historic literature, readers and writers can gain a deeper understanding of current day issues and subjects, important in providing invaluable background and context, along with a wider perspective to inform current opinion and work.
Some Days Are Better Than Ours: A Collection of Tragedies by Barbara Byar
Barbara Byar’s collection, Some Days Are Better Than Ours: A Collection of Tragedies, rages against normality, a feat that hits close to home in the COVID-19 era.
Best Small Fictions Roundtable: Part 4
Jennifer Fliss and Jennifer Todhunter discuss grief, parenting, resilience, and catharsis.
Best Small Fictions Roundtable: Part 3
Cathy Ulrich and Chaya Bhuvaneswar discuss finding a story's pulse, finding time to write, and engaging in community.
Best Small Fictions Roundtable: Part 2
Michele Finn Johnson and Tommy Dean discuss saving characters, hearing voices, and giving back to the literary community.
Best Small Fictions Roundtable: Part 1
Tara Isabel Zambrano and Christopher Allen discuss expanding The Moment in flash fiction, stirring the bubbling pot of character, and knowing when a draft is done.
Ways We Vanish: A Conversation with Todd Dillard
The map of human life isn’t a line, and I wanted to show that here. Life can look like a phone call coming from your chest, a door in the middle of the woods, a moon that, for a time, sings, and then is never heard again.
Crossing the Line: When and How to Write about Family
When family members are the subject of creative nonfiction, is their privacy unfairly infringed upon? Who has the right to tell a particular story? What is the point of sharing personal stories?
An Archipelago of Truths: The Island Dwellers by Jen Silverman
In intimate, first-person narration, The Island Dwellers reads like a series of private letters addressed to our hidden selves.