Category: Nonfiction
-
The List of Gruesome Places
by Mark Brazaitis As a journalist, my father had covered fires and floods. He’d covered bloody protests and a war in the Middle East. When, in February of 1991, he visited me in Guatemala, where I was working as a Peace Corps volunteer, he asked if we could visit the capital’s infamous basurero. He didn’t…
-
What Comes Up
by Angela Townsend Everyone is excited about the norovirus. Some people think it starts with negative thinking, or else it wouldn’t be called the “neuro virus.” Some people attribute their immunity to apple cider vinegar, misanthropy, or the Holy Ghost. Some people assume you have the stomach for an unabridged reading of their personal norovirus…
-
Bitter to Ripe
By DM Anderson I was twelve years old the first time I uttered the words son of a bitch. Naturally, I had no idea what those words meant. I was merely a child. I only knew the expression came with a sinister adult-sized connotation. That same year was also when I decided to move my…
-
The Zoo
By Eli Coyle It was a late Saturday afternoon, the last whispers of February drifting away, and the Zoo was alive, a cacophony of youthful chaos. Not a literal zoo, but the name we bestowed upon our apartment complex, an ecosystem thriving with untamed twenty-somethings running wild, fueled by the heady mix of drugs and…
-
Body Doubles
By Katie R McKay I’ve always hated the spring, but it’s the time of year I’m most prone to falling in love. When I think back to that spring, I think about so many things, things like the balmy weather, the day drinking, the rolling nature of the days, one blurring into another in a…
-
The Elsewhere or: On Reading A Brief History of Time
By Jacob Simmons In less than half a century, man’s view of the universe has been transformed. In less than a year, I’ll be forty. Jesus. Forty years old. When I was in my twenties, I moved to the middle of a blackberry field, into a farmhouse that roasts me like a chicken when Fresno…
-
Now You See Me
A girl goes missing sometime in August. She is on a road trip with her fiancé, driving across the country in a van, documenting her journey on Instagram—#vanlife. She uploads her last post in August. She smiles, holding a crocheted pumpkin. Her milky white teeth betray innocence; her fine blonde hair frames a delicate face.…
-
Seven-Year Love
Is it crazy to fall in love with a girl because of the way she said no? Fall of 2010, our last year at Calvin College, I was keeping N company while she worked the student apartment desk, and I started talking about depression.