creative nonfiction

Three years after the breakup, the last thing I expected from Martin was spam mail. The spam wasn’t as obvious as a Nigerian prince who’d fallen on hard times and…

Janice needed to get off the phone. She needed to sit in silence. A minute before, I had told her about my plans to meet up with a friend, a…

Ultimately, the one thing about literature is that it’s never static. As soon as something becomes a trend, readers are looking outside of that trend, wondering what new kinds of books are out beyond the breakers, or still an undertow.

It’s one thing—an important, vital thing—to read stories from other lives and get to know them, and it’s another—also vital thing—to read stories about experiences and emotions and situations you or your friends have lived, to feel those things as deeply as it can be felt because you are linked to them.

I.  I crossed the Canadian border in mid-June. The border agent peered at me as I explained that I was going to Horsefly to visit some friends. He told me…

What’s more important: voice or story? I guess that depends but if the writer’s beautiful phrasings don’t stir a reader’s soul or itch a remote corner of his or her skull, then it’s fallen short of its objective and a missed opportunity.

If we’re looking to break new ground, it’s not only the inventive technique of the writing, or even the fine quality of the prose, that distinguishes one writer or press from the next. It’s more likely the ability of the writer to: (1) see past his or her navel (or to at least navigate the navel in an altogether illuminating fashion—e.g., The Shimmering Go-Between); (2) engage the reader; and (3) help the world heal.

We pack into Kanschat’s mom’s minivan because she is the only mom willing to drive us to Santa Maria—a city of strip malls ringed with farmlands—so we can play in…

It’s time to walk out into the evening and bus home. But I move slowly, then stop and listen as Marianne talks on the phone. Hearts usually get cut out…

The Kanawha County Schools textbook controversy began in 1974, when I was in third grade at Elkview Elementary School, a tiny school on the banks of the Elk River, north…

Imagine me telling you the following story, only you’re not only reconstructing the words, you’re fully imagining me reading in a raspy monologue that borders between the vibrato of a…

My only thought for the entire two months before going home for a one-week vacation was, I’m going to eat so many gyros and souvlakia, it’s not even funny. That…

The other evening, while putting my daughter to sleep, our seven month-old kitten jumped onto the bed to nest at her feet. The evening is always the same. After dinner…

All of the money we make from reading fees funnels right back into the production costs of our books. That, unfortunately, is the brunt of costs. The more funding we receive from the university, the more books we can produce. We can only afford to put out a couple of books annually at this point, although we would love to do more. Even with small increments of university funding, it is barely enough to keep a small press working.