Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2022 från Creative Nonfiction

We all get tired of being ourselves, sometimes. That’s one of the reasons we read, in any genre—to be transported beyond our own experiences, to consider others’ perspectives and ways of going through life, and then, to come back with a fresh outlook. It’s why we write, too: to discover unexpected truths or previously unarticulated ideas. But sometimes there are ideas or truths that feel too complicated or too dangerous to approach head-on. Fortunately, writers have a range of tools at our disposal, and one of those is voice. While assembling this issue, our editors were drawn to works with unconventional narrators: a cancer story narrated by a sardonic tumor; a profile collaged from a month’s worth of conversation; a confession—or is it?—that could crack a decades-old cold case, among…

Push open the high school doors during lunch hour and breathe in the salty-sweet air of Burger King and Taco Bell and Starbucks, the delicious temptations of the franchised suburbs. Behind you, forever behind you, the cafeteria food is as appetizing as the Wednesday buffet at a strip-mall Irish pub—steamed cauliflower and yesterday’s flounder—without the booze. Who among us wouldn’t crave the bag of hot, heavily salted fries, the Nachos BellGrande, the sugary, caffeinated comfort of a Frappuccino? Who wouldn’t look at the kids with easier lives, kids with money jammed in their pockets to buy the bliss of filling, empty carbohydrates and think: I’ll do it. And you do. You, driven only by the knife of teenage hunger and the slanted courage to make it happen, take the dare.…

I have just finished writing a book that tells the story of the evolution of creative nonfiction, as I saw it and lived it. And now, as I write this in late July, a couple of weeks after sending the manuscript off to my publisher, I am beginning to feel like myself again. I mean, I am ready to re-enter the world—as a person, as Lee Gutkind, a guy who lives in the Shadyside section of Pittsburgh and has a family (small), friends (a few), and interests aside from writing (the Steelers, golf, hanging out at bars)—all gradually left behind as I was writing this book. There’s an isolation, what becomes an obsessed single-mindedness, that comes with committing to a book project. The book takes over your life. This doesn’t happen…

More specifically, I am Al’s Primary Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma. Even more specifically, I’m Al’s Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma. Or, you could just call me Cancer, but you’re better off not calling me at all, and hoping that I never call you. Al is fortunate to have me. Really. There are many types of lymphoma more aggressive than I am. I hear medical staff describe me as non-aggressive, indolent, and slow-growing, and honestly, I find this kind of insulting. I’m no wimp-phoma. I usually affect the skin only, but in one in ten people, I will progress further to the lymph nodes and/or internal organs, with serious complications. And now, I’m doing my best to ruin Al’s day, maybe even ruin Al. Goals. So, where did I come from? Who can…

How turning to geometrical concepts can strengthen nonfiction writing A poster in the back of my high school math classroom announced Math Is Everywhere. The words were displayed across a flowering shaft of lavender, the feather of a bird’s wing, and the interior of a seashell. Mapped into the center was the Pythagorean theorem: the square of a right triangle’s hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of its other two sides. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras swam in math, leading devotees to believe in the “harmony of the spheres,” a relation of the vibrations and distance of celestial bodies from earth to string length-ratios. This idea, that numerical ratios are present in both math and music, was taken by Johannes Kepler and further extended into geometry. I often think…

So this dude I’ve been working alongside, landscaping and whatnot, he looks a lot like me: buzz cut that’s starting to grow out, blond beard and mustache, blue eyes, maybe just shy of six feet, 160 or so pounds. Three weeks we’ve been working together, talking and talking and talking. DRIVING THE TRUCK I’d like to get another twenty on me, but summer is hard. In November I’ll gain it back. But then with all the snow, shit, gonna lose it. Last January he plowed five eighteen-hour days in a row, followed by a month of shoveling roofs, meaning rope and harness, eight feet deep plus plenty of ice. Raised in Connecticut, this dude: Thirty-four years old and counting. First got busted for weed in high school. SPADES IN THE…

NIKKI CAMPO Interview with Elissa Bassist Nikki Campo is a nonfiction and humor writer who has contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Geographic, the Belladonna Comedy, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. nikkicampo.com nikkicampo KRISTIN KEANE Striving for Harmony Kristin Keane is the author of the novella Luminaries and a memoir about grief and time travel, An Encyclopedia of Bending Time. Her writing and research have appeared in the Washington Post, New England Review, TriQuarterly, Electric Literature, Catapult, Reading Research Quarterly, American Educator, and elsewhere. thisisnotreallyhere.space kitenearsink LEATH TONINO So This Dude Leath Tonino is a freelance writer who has published prose and poetry in Orion, the Sun, Outside, Tricycle, New England Review, and many other magazines. He is the author of…

Between April 14, 2022 and September 19, 2022, the following individuals and organizations contributed to the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. Their generosity makes the magazine and CNF’s other publications and educational programs possible. We are tremendously grateful for their support. FANS Peggy Acott, Carolyn Alessio, Courtney Allen, Judith Armatta, Leslie Baker, Julia Baker, Chandra Bales, Michelle Barichello, Jane Barnard, Nancy Barnes, Monica Barron, Stephanie Barton, Jennifer Beard, Kathy Bell, Cathy Beres, Catt Berlin, Daniel Bernhard, Alex Bertram, Shannon Bevins, Denise Bike, Dr. Dianne Blomberg, Sabrina Bolus, Ellen Boomer, Suzanne Bossert, Lauren Botha, Melissa Bouyounan, Nicole Bowmer, Deborah Brandon, Karen Buley, Kelly Campbell, Amanda Campbell, Nicole Campo, Sabine Casparie, Joyce Catlett, Nancy Cattelona, Maria Ceferatti, Liesse Chable, Becka Chester, Rachel Christensen, Lisa Cottrell, Mary Couture, Jocelyn Cox, Margaret Crane, Barbara Davenport, Alden…

I magine a sticky, early August morning, around three o’clock. It is dark, the moon blocked by clouds, no streetlights, a siren in the distance, medics running to a heart attack. Imagine a man out on a bike or walking a sick dog, or maybe a woman who works at a bar and has just finished the late shift. In a car or on foot or on a bike—it doesn’t matter. This stretch of road is rarely used; it’s dark and development has yet to come, so there isn’t much through traffic. Just a lonely street on a high bank above a muddy black canal that smells of salt marsh. A desolate piece of road below a span of highway that towers twenty-four feet above. The passerby is startled by what…

yes mama, after all, the only time I really felt uncertain about a sexual advance was at a college party where my boyfriend took me, drunk for the very first time, to his bedroom, pulled my underwear to my knees & used his fingers to enter—did I mention I was drunk?—& said, I know you don’t want to have sex, but do you want to just touch it, & for a second I closed my eyes & I thought, I guess this is what we’re doing, but he stopped when I asked him to stop & in the morning he apologized & meant it so, really, who could blame him & a couple months later, on a first date, a different man bought the drinks & made me laugh, so…

Early in my career, I joined a writing group with the word change in its name. When friends asked, “What kind of change are you writing about?” I responded, “Whatever kind of change is happening in my life”—whether that change occurred by chance or was initiated by me. Changes occur daily in all our lives: moves, aging, illness, death. As a writer and public speaker and citizen, I’ve always been especially interested in the way we can use these shifts in our personal landscapes to bring about change in the world. In 2018, for example, a mishandled 911 response led to the asphyxiation death of a sixteen-year-old boy trapped in his minivan, leading his parents to push the Cincinnati City Council to overhaul its emergency measures. Author Nadine Gordimer, a…

Deceased Matriarchs. Gram. Mom. As I move deeper into the dirt of terminal cancer & the disabilities it brings, I hear frustrated voices, scowling faces, because no one understands. I see shoulders & backs hunched over walkers & canes. I shuffle by the mirror. It’s me. @charligirll • 4 JUNE 2021 I was the girl who couldn’t speak. I was so shy, so afraid, I remember clearly the first time I heard my voice. My high school boy friend had asked for his class ring back, and I said no. It shocked us both. He let me keep it a few more weeks. @ConnieKuhns • 14 JUNE 2022 Undiagnosed autistic, I masked so well I couldn’t see it. My last fifteen years of essays aren’t false, though they rarely fully…