Articles

(after Rodney Jones) Leslie Marie Aguilar Together, we drive south down US 277, listening to a song by Iron & Wine. We share a slow way of listening to folk music, as you drive your Jeep Grand Cherokee towards Dead Man’s Curve. I hear the whining guitar, with its useless longing, then the bearded man …

Kate Washington In my family we gnaw the bones. We chew gristly bits that stick between my teeth. The sharp point of bone split smoothly with a butcher’s saw stabs my tongue when I pick up a lamb chop. My brother cracks chicken cartilage between his teeth, and any drumstick my father has eaten sports …

Natalie Vestin Movement reveals the purpose of muscle. Barricaded by bone and tendon, locked in the tight swaddling of the fascia, the muscles jostle and nuzzle their partners. They communicate their position and desire and intention to nerves buried deep within them, sending messages through the cushions of the limbs, the tiniest hint of a …

Jennifer Murvin When it looked like he was finally going to drown where he stood, Papa had one of his lungs removed. The other lung remained alone in his chest, and I always saw it like a single balloon hanging from a day-old birthday bouquet, and sometimes when my mom was busy in the evening …

Sonja Livingston How we waited for her. How we hoped, even prayed, sometimes, to see her. But then, our greed was nothing new, especially where groceries were concerned. On shopping days, a dozen hands pawed the insides of brown paper bags, a hungry tribe touching the surface of things, blessing the potatoes with our longing, …

Martha Gies Ninh. He grew up in an affluent suburb of Saigon. During the American War his father worked as a translator for the U.S. State Department but in 1975, in the chaos of the sudden helicopter evacuations, his American friends at the embassy left Ninh’s father behind. When the Vietnam People’s Army captured Saigon, …

Monica McFawn   I A pony hangs from a sling in the middle of a barn aisle in Indiana. His front right cannon bone is broken and in a thick white cast with a slight curve for the knee. He is a silver dun with patches of white on his head, belly, and streaking his …

Leslie Marie Aguilar   You, ordinary plaid button down on a wooden hanger dangling in the back of a walk-in closet. You, drawn out a in dang, the way a lazy right eye wanders to the left when the eager head turns too fast. You, chiseled nose brown with freckles leaving a trail of beauty …

Brenda Miller I’ve just come home from the NonfictioNow conference in beautiful Iowa City, a town known for its writers. This conference is the largest gathering of creative nonfiction writers and teachers in the nation. We get a little giddy as hundreds of us converge at the University of Iowa to not only discuss esoteric …

Brenda Miller Dear Reader: As I write this missive to you in January, the northwest is already hell bent on setting a record for rain this year.   You may have heard: 28 straight days of rain in Seattle, the Nooksack and Skagit rivers flooding, mudslides closing down major thoroughfares.  Students walk across campus shrouded in …