Indholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2016 i Creative Nonfiction

SARA HENDERY is from North Carolina but currently resides in Chicago. She is an assistant editor for Hotel Amerika literary magazine and is earning her MFA at Columbia College Chicago. AGROUP OF BOYS. Group—meaning, powerful. Young like first breath, like new morning, like unlearned words. They gather, circling around an old beat-up shed; I sit and watch from an Amtrak train paused on the outskirts of a neighborhood in North Carolina. The boys are spray-painting diligently, as in, These words must be perfect; they must make us look dangerous, masculine, like men. I watch them congratulate each other with heavy high-fives and hawks of spit on the ground. A woman, the owner of the shed, I assume, walks out of her trailer, finds the group of boys vandalizing her property.…

RANDON BILLINGS NOBLE is an essayist. Her work has appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times, the Georgia Review, the Rumpus, Brevity, Fourth Genre, and elsewhere. She is a nonfiction editor at r.kv.r.y quarterly, Reviews Editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and a reviewer for the A.V. Club. FOR CHILDREN, the world of fact is riveting. Whether they are looking at a book about polar bears in the Arctic or watching worms wriggle on the sidewalk, whether they are learning about faraway galaxies or stargazing in the backyard, whether they are reading a biography of Newton or noticing the way a penny sinks in a fountain, children are fascinated by the way the world works, both in life and on the page. And sometimes their early reading…

BRENDA MILLER is the author of five essay collections, most recently An Earlier Life (Ovenbird Books, 2016). She also coauthored Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction and The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World. Her work has received six Pushcart Prizes. She is a professor of English at Western Washington University and associate faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop. JULIE MARIE WADE is the author of several collections of poetry and prose, including Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures, Small Fires, Postage Due, When I Was Straight, Catechism: A Love Story, and the forthcoming SIX. A recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir and grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, she teaches in the creative writing…

MARCELLE SOVIERO is the owner and editor of Brain, Child magazine. Her essays have appeared in numerous places including Salon, Eating Well, and NPR. I WAS A WRITER long before I became a mother, but in 1998, with the birth of my daughter, Sophia, my writing self changed with the emergence of my mother self. I exploded with energy and creativity—and new material. I wrote about Sophia often, and she remains a source of inspiration. By 2002, a mother of three children under the age of four, I wrote in any spots I could find (haven’t we all tried to escape to a closet?), sometimes for only fifteen minutes at a clip. My writing became as primal to me as my desire to have children had been. My view of…

RUNNER-UP! Best Essay Prize KRISTI MURRAY COSTELLO is an assistant professor of writing studies and the director of the Writing Program and Writing Center at Arkansas State University. She is the recipient of two Association of Writers & Writing Programs Intro Journals Project prizes, an Academy of American Poets College Prize, and the Newhouse Writing Award for Poetry. Her work can be found in Barrelhouse, Paddlefish, Paterson Literary Review, Flexible Persona, Caduceus, Pennsylvania English, Connecticut River Review, Chariton Review, and Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, among others. She lives in Jonesboro, Arkansas, with her husband, Liam, and their two adorable rescue dogs, and she spends far too much money and time on rock concerts. MY MOM WAKES ME Sunday morning from my borrowed bed by dangling…

KYLA BUCKINGHAM lives in New York City and works on open access journals at John Wiley & Sons. Previously, she was a developmental editor for textbooks and scientific journals, a technical writer, a copywriter, and a grant writer. She has published articles with Gürze Books and is currently writing a memoir. DURING METEOR SHOWERS, my sister and I used to lie on our backs in a clearing above the lake, above the trees, above the dam. We pointed at constellations with a flashlight, and when fire streaked the sky, we said, “There! Did you see it?” We found the cloudy arm of the Milky Way. We studied stars and fancied ourselves astronomers. Eyes big with wonder, we could have eaten the entire night sky. She told me the story of…

In “this be the verse,” Philip Larkin writes: They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. These metronomic lines are funny, but for moms and dads, they’re also haunting. If the average parent does the kind of unintended damage Larkin suggests with his F-bomb, then what about the average nonfiction-writing parent? We essayists and memoirists often take as subjects our children—and for good reason. Having them reconstructs us. As Elizabeth Stone says, “Making the decision to have a child . . . is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” If you’re a writer, it’s hard to endure such a life shift without processing it through language. Our children create in us entirely new identities, which…

CARRIE BARKER’s nonfiction has been named winner and runner-up of two Norton Writer’s Prizes and has appeared in publications such as Everyone’s an Author and The Norton Sampler. She is a graduate of Kirkwood Community College and the University of Iowa. abecedarian a novice learning the rudiments of a subject, a beginner or amateur; a student; straightforward, simplified; in literature, a work arranged in order according to the alphabet, often written about a single topic. believe to have confidence or faith in the truth; to give credence to; as a child, it seemed certain no one would; as an adult, what I am still learning to do. character the combined total of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing; moral or ethical quality; qualities…

TINY TRUTHS from winners of the daily #cnftweet contest Can you tell a true story in a single tweet? To join in the fun, follow us @cnfonline and tag your entries with #cnftweet. Your micro-essay could appear in the next issue of CNF! Jayne_Martin The mother into whose arms I could always go for comfort now feels small and frail in mine. She wears lipstick for my visit. 13 Aug 15 Vwagner The rising creek water gave my parents the emergency they needed to stop fighting and consider what frail ark we might build. 11 May 15 WilliamReagan 3 yr old relents to sleep without revolt. My elation at this tiny victory would confound my younger self. As my whole life would. 19 Jun 15 anikawriter First it was princess…