Brian Doyle, the versatile author of eleven books of fiction, nonfiction, and “proems,” could well be the love child of a literary three-way between George Saunders, Steve Almond, and the late …
Henry Corbin, whose writings have illuminated the Sufi tradition for the western mind, states that the symbolic image “announces a plane of consciousness distinct from rational evidence; it is the …
The speaker of Ken Babstock’s Methodist Hatchet is both anxious and confident. Confident because he knows there is no hope, yet the show must go on if only for the purposes of pure aesthetic …
Salman Rushdie recently mentioned at a reading in Houston, apropos of his novel Luka and the Fire of Life, being attracted to “fiction that waves its arms about.” While Matt Bondurant’s …
Perhaps it is not a logical assumption that a collection of poems inspired by the philosophical musings in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Circles,” would be especially exciting. Intelligent, yes, …
Sean Patrick Hill: To begin, I’d like to ask about the title of your book, Address . Obviously, there are a couple thematic dimensions to it: addressing others on both a small, personal scale and …
You’ve come back again looking for the weeping girl with braids you most likely have a better phrase or feel more prepared to deal with sorrow she’s still gone i put her in a bar she is older …
I have decided that my life is her dare. One that I shout fuck against in this thawing month that weeps like a wet corner of bread, stupid flesh that I am decided to fail. Who am I to press …
The grapefruit tree explodes with the power of its senselessness. To hold this thought in my mind I had to shoo away many others. It’s really a leap to believe Howdy Doody was actually speaking …
but he never really took advantage of it. He gave his wife the house he was supposed to give to his mistress. Jenny asks me if I think that is way romantic & I know it’s a trick …
last night I felt a salt sorrow rise in my body, in my mouth, and thought, having a child will not fix this . and, I may always be alone . sugar only made my heart shiver, and the bath had hands like …
Southbound, Erica says she wishes eucalyptus didn’t look so much like apocalypse. Erica never looks her future directly in the eyes. It hits a hundred, dizzy, and she’s like a walking skinny dip. …
What they eat. What they don’t eat. What they leave behind, left there to tell you of their having been. Their hunger. Their choice of eating. Their animal and the parts of the animal we are to …
— I remember when I touched my sleeping mother’s hair, it sparked in my hands and I thought she was inhuman, but I was young, and only years later would I understand she was under the spell of an …
You wanted to open a café called Rimbaud’s Helicopter . I just kept telling myself to look loveable . We watched Apocalypse Now in two sleeping bags zipped together incorrectly. I confessed how I …
Selected for inclusion in Best American Travel Writing 2013 The year I didn’t walk 1,900 miles along the US-Mexico border, I purchased a detail map of the border states and Northern Mexico at the …
First there is Brandon, who everyone calls Squeaky B because of his big body and small voice. Also his sixteen-year-old cousin, Duncan, who opts out of high school and instead sits on the front porch …
Excerpted from Love, Lies and Marriage (FSG), a book in progress When the cops beat on the door I was in a warm bath pecking at my basilic vein with the Global knife my second wife had allowed me …
The First Toilet I grew up in a house with four toilets—two upstairs, two down—but as a young girl, I cleaned only one. My sister and I took turns with the toilet we shared. My mother cleaned the …
In the final hours of daylight, he refuses to stop throwing his football against the chain-link fence. His arm aches from the relentless throwing, and the fence rattles as if the boy could drive a …
The big square pills or the small bullet pills make our old dog Sequoia thirsty. She laps up so much water I have to refill her bowl twice a day. I joke that she is doing much better than me—I am …
I understood my daughter would leave, at least in the abstract. I really did. I knew it was coming, and I prepared myself. I read all the blogs, and I knew enough to be ready to pick up a couple of …
It was the year that Atlanta police charged Wayne Williams with the murders of two black males, and my father announced he was going to be on TV. It was 1981; I was thirteen, a white kid, in a …
Jennings has not come to her bed in eight days, not since the dog died. He begged her to bury the dog, weeping while she looked out the window at the orange trees, eight hundred acres of dark leaves …
The job took her first to Boulder, scenic city under peaks, then to Albuquerque, gritty city under peaks, and now down to the border, henpecked city under peaks, in a town named for crosses. Las …
My best friend Grace has this circus, and the two of them go everywhere together, her and her circus, because they’re in love. Even I have to admit that it’s the real thing, and I …
1. False Husband Not long before we board, another passenger has a request. I don’t think I look sympathetic. Mirrored, there’s only my empty face, waiting for some emotion to twitch …
The professors are having trouble with their marriage. They have been married for twenty-five years and have each had one affair. They know about the other’s affair and usually they …
Winner of the 2012 Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction, selected by Jenny Boully Saddlebacked Two women. One has a pair of matching pocketbooks, slung over a forearm and clenched in a fist, and …
Winner of the 2012 Gulf Coast Prize in Poetry, selected by Joyelle McSweeney There is a line that could make you love me really, but reeling, I spend the words like virgin coin for a …
Winner of the 2012 Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction, selected by Victor LaValle It is difficult for me to talk about Sarla Shah. These days everyone has a label for her. Some labels I find too …
Hybrid essays, lyrical essays, nonfiction novels, memoirs in fragments. Lately, the blurring of genre lines, although a storied tradition, seems to be of particular interest within writing programs …
