Nonfiction from Katie M. Zeigler
Photo: Sophie Laurent Papier-Mâché Moai He said he’d made them with his hands and his brain, as if the two were owners of the same small business. I was anticipating a tool shed, or a series of small pinch pots arranged on a wooden shelf, so I curled the excitement at the back of my […]
Nonfiction from Moisés Delgado
Photo: Aperture Vintage Preparing for the End of the World It is 2012 and the world is ending. New York is underwater, the earth is splitting below LA’s feet, and here in Omaha, Nebraska, the sky is dark and touching ground—skyrocketing cars out of this orbit, untethering chain link fences, splintering our home open. But […]
Nonfiction from Liza Olson
Photo: Kati Sidewalk Sprout I don’t want to write about a scales-falling-from-the-eyes moment because there wasn’t one, or only just one. I don’t want to focus on the pain of not fitting a mold I was never going to fit, or give the trans portrayal that’s expected, because the pain of making the transition, for […]
Nonfiction from Barrett Bowlin
Original Photo: Timothy Eberly Out for Blood (or Air, or Whatever) You stumble through the gym doors, away from the people and into the almost-snow cold, skin so hot to the touch that steam rises off you into the night air. You hop the Red Line to Porter Square, where there’s ten minutes before the […]
Nonfiction from Akshita Krishnan
Photo: Abhishek Chadha chellame, chellame Author’s note: Inspired by the tradition of the akam, or Tamil love poetry since the 1st century BCE, this lyric essay pays homage to the South Asian custom of having one’s hair oiled by a maternal figure. chellame: noun; a term of endearment (familial and romantic) in the tamil language […]
Nonfiction from Gloria Pearlman
Photo: Michael Bottom Feeder: Specimens in Silhouette I didn’t mean to drown her. It was only that she withered so quickly before my eyes. I was saving the morphine for a rainy day, but summer monsoons kept holding back. She always cried so readily in smooth strokes of night swims; I couldn’t choose another way. […]
Nonfiction from Julie Flattery
Photo: Patrick Hendry Fly Away “You should put bird seed on the floor and open up all the windows,” my mom tells me. Her icy blue eyes stare past me at something I cannot see. “But we might get in trouble, Mom, like Eloise, when she went to Paris,” I say, recalling a favorite childhood […]
Nonfiction from Amy R. Martin
Photo: Mandy Henry Oysters Like some old-timey aristocrat, she sent my husband a clipping in an envelope sealed with a crimson wax heart. When I opened the envelope, it fluttered to the ground like a lady’s handkerchief, like an invitation: Pick me up, it said. It was from the Travel section of The Evening Standard: […]
Nonfiction from Bassam Sidiki
Photo: Danielle MacInnes Uninvited Guests Author’s note: The following personal essay is an example of the Indo-Persian mode of oral storytelling called dāstān or qiṣṣah. The essay adopts a very specific subgenre of this mode, the t̤irāz. According to Urdu scholar Pasha M. Khan, the t̤irāz was grouped into four chapters called “ḳhabars,” plus a conclusion […]
Nonfiction from Despy Boutris
Photo: Cristian Palmer Two Friends Confront Mortality We’re treading in the middle of the lake, the water deep enough to drown us. My eyes fix to some point in the distance, beyond the eucalyptus and pines making outlines against the night sky. He lifts his hands to the surface and splashes my face with water […]
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