Tucumcari by Patrick Parks 150 pages – KERNPUNKT Press   Someday I will write a book about my father because he helped build the first atomic bomb. * My father…

I often think about my mother when I was ten. She seemed so old and worn out, life processed and I have a hard time believing that I am older…

Image Credit: Slate   1.   The wet human hair looks opalescent through plastic. The man in the red flannel edges closer, bends down to get a better look, backs…

I’m interested in writers who offer exceptional counterpoints to the literary mainstream. These days that usually means people situated outside the Academy.

I’ve taught Junot Díaz’ short stories and his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, for years. His short story collection, Drown, has been a consistent favorite among my…

The whole world felt like a crisper drawer. It smelled like the heady soap rush of an open door at a laundromat, the first bloom of jasmine. Trees crowded with…

Anthropological representations of black women, sexuality and families in the African Diaspora (early-mid 20th century)   This course will emphasize the history of women anthropologists, especially women from ethnic or…

A white ibis crossed Grand Concourse when the car hit Lazarus Didaci. He glimpsed an orange bill which curved from a smudge of white feathers. Then the car, a gray…

The move shook up the objects. There were twenty-five-year-old cassette tapes, handwritten letters and pre-pregnancy clothes. And the box marked, “Italia.” My husband and I had become first-time homeowners and…

[Image Credit: “Fire Painting” by Louis Parsons] There were historic fires that season—all of them of the untamable sort which rips indiscriminately through town as well as through forest and…

Baseball: A game played between two teams that take turns playing offense and defense. Two teams take the field for play. We sing an anthemic devotion to our pastime like…

Grady Chambers is the author of North American Stadiums, winner of the inaugural Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in June 2018. He was a 2015-2017 Wallace Stegner Fellow…

Rachel Lyon and I first met when I took a workshop she was leading through Sackett Street Writers last year. She was a wonderful teacher and has been a sage…

It had been a while since I’d thought about National Geographic. I had ‘unliked’ it along with all travel and nature sites when I’d moved back from Uganda two years…