When a stray dog broke into the family garden one afternoon, my cat chased him back out onto the street.
House of Animals by Tal Abbady
Category: Creative Nonfiction
The Waiting Rooms by Michael Henry
My mother is in the bedroom, its atmosphere a fog of cigarette smoke. She works through the good book of crosswords, lying on her stomach on the creaky queen bed.
Good Intentions and a Bad Idea by Anjoli Roy
The thing is, I don’t even like dogs. In my world, dogs are either small, yappy things that gnaw your ankles or monsters that slobber on your sundresses.
I Am Still Here by Emily Brisse
A three o’clock school bus. Early autumn. Monday. The sun seeps through glass and sizzles against the black seats, burning the backs of arms and legs…
Period by Gretchen Clark
In sixth grade, I came home to find a book at the end of my bed. Its title, Period, was written in big white letters, punctuated by a bright red dot.
Cowboys Are His Weakness by Kim Steutermann Rogers
I twiddle with the radio during the four-hour drive from the airport in Midland, Texas, to Big Bend National Park… Now, the airwaves match the landscape: vacant.
My Barber Ben by Barth Landor
My barber Ben cut hair in Auschwitz. He spent three and a half years in a darkness in which it would seem impossible for anything to have grown, including hair.
Glorious Defeats: Lessons in Emergency Medicine by Linda Keyes
“I said, can you get me something to eat bitch?” I stiffen. This is early on in my emergency medicine residency and I haven’t yet learned to reply, “That’s Doctor bitch to you, sir.”
Four Times More Likely by Rae Pagliarulo
When my father said the word predisposed, I felt a twinge of nerves. We were having “the talk.” Not the one about birds or bees, but something bigger and scarier that my brother and I would have to inevitably face…
Gas Masks and Wedding Vows by Jennifer Lang
The shrill woke me out of my sleep. An azaka, one of the newest words in my growing Hebrew vocabulary, a continuous alarm with an ascending and descending tone, an eerie up-then-down sound, echoed into the onyx sky.
