While a student in the Stonecoast MFA program, Melanie Brooks set out to write a memoir—a story that, once pen was put to paper, stirred up emotions, emotions she hadn’t realized would still be so painful.
Jimmy unleashed his usual slick card swipe, but as he glided into his infamous turnstile roll things turned to shit in a hurry.
We move to page 154. The walls moan like a grandmother who has walked up too many steps. Then they settle back into their braces. No one else seems to feel the shift…
I discovered truth one day during my seventh shot with a tennis ball machine, as imparted by a one-handed topspin backhand. At the time no thought was given…
The woman jaywalking toward my side of the street is slight, with stooped shoulders and a bent back. Her wiry neck branches into collarbones so sharp that they resemble a wire hanger…
I run my mother’s old engagement ring along its chain around my neck. Back and forth in the absentminded way I have been doing since I strung it there last month.
You have to use the other hand, your left hand. Everything is different…
Sir Ernest Shackleton set out on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition to cross Antarctica in 1914. If you’re savvy to this sort of history, you’ll remember that he never made it.
While the cover of the book states: “Essays by Joel Peckham,” these are not the common essays you’d would expect.
Strangers. We were taught not to talk to them, perhaps a request made with the best of intentions. But, so often, there’s much more to those we don’t know. That’s the reasoning behind this year’s theme issue.
