Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2018 i Creative Nonfiction

On november 30, 2017, about thirty writers assembled in Boston at the headquarters of GrubStreet, one of the largest writing centers in the country, for an event organized by the Boston Writers of Color group. The night’s event, called a Local Editor Panel, featured editors of Massachusetts-based literary magazines and a nervous volunteer moderator: me. Despite my efforts to contact magazines that employ an ethnically and racially diverse staff, none of the editors who had accepted my invitation to be on the panel were people of color. Should the event be cancelled? Shouldn’t representation be a prerequisite for a conversation that was to center, in part, on inclusion? Despite my misgivings, we didn’t cancel the event that night because I received advice from writers of color not to, and, of…

RABIN KNEW I WAS AFRAID to light the kerosene stove. His patient instructions accompanied open-mouthed delight at my ineptitude. This ten-year-old Nepali, wearing only limp cotton shorts, loved being my teacher in the tiny village where my Peace Corps training took place. My homework was to practice lighting the stove so when I set off to my post in Biratnagar a month later, I could boil water and not die of giardia (or so I said; one doesn’t die of giardia, it turns out). Rabin knelt by the smudged brass canister, pointing. Here you pump. Here you adjust the flow of gas. Here you hold the match, until poof! A ball of fire. His elegant hands exploded in my face to make sure I understood. That explosion was what I…

Pyrotechnics: Blowing Up Your Life on the Page I’D PRACTICED MY STORY in the car, making key details anonymous. I called my city “a Michigan college town.” I changed everyone’s name. And I figured that even if the audience despised me, it wasn’t like I lived in Chicago; I’d never have to see them again. But standing at the mic, ready to tell my story for The Moth, I suddenly remembered Tyler, the stage manager, sitting onstage next to the emcee, waiting to signal the five-minute mark. Tyler, my former student. Who knew me at the same time my story took place. Who might think I was a bad person if I told this story. But I was here, in front of almost a thousand people, with a story I…

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! anikawriter The lake water rose until the dock was a few inches below the surface, invisible at some angles. Two minnows darted across it and a box turtle scrambled over it. We took our shoes off and walked on water, suspended between there and here. 22 Jul 18 deborahcrooks I walked outside to find I was overdressed, the morning fog cleared by a noon sun. The jacaranda tree had dropped blossoms on the windshield and suddenly, inexplicably, I was in a different city in a different year staring up at your window, wondering if it was…

MARANIE RAE STAAB is a Pittsburgh-based independent photographer and journalist working to document human rights and social justice issues, displacement and the periphery of conflict—how violence and war affects individuals and societies. Her work focuses on people and especially those in marginalized parts of society, whether domestically or abroad. To date, her work has taken her throughout Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The illustrations in this issue were selected from her photographs of street art and graffiti. Staab explains, “Some dismiss street art as a lesser art form, and others don’t consider it art at all. When done well, street art and graffiti can serve not only to enhance an urban landscape but also to touch your heart, mind, and soul. Almost always it…

You would think that by [the end of my second year as a New Yorker staff writer] I would have developed some confidence in writing a new story, but I hadn’t, and never would. To lack confidence at the outset seems rational to me.— JOHN MCPHEE, DRAFT NO. 4 AS A PROFESSOR teaching creative writing to undergraduates, I’m asked dozens of questions about writing on a weekly basis because my students distrust struggle and mistakenly sense that they’re somehow doing it wrong. I try my best to respond with the few insights about the craft of writing that I’ve managed to cobble together over the years, making it clear that I’ve got the same writerly difficulties. Sometimes what I answer suffices, but more often, the student frowns, sighs, and asks…

WE’VE ALL BEEN to good parties and bad parties. The best parties have interesting guests, respectful and thought-provoking conversation, and a goodly amount of laughter. The bad parties are filled with awkward small talk. The worse parties are ones where people make asses of themselves. The worst parties are the ones where you are that ass. For almost twenty years, I’ve been editing literary publications with the philosophy that it’s like hosting a good party, and I thought I had it down pat. For the past five years, I’ve been editing Full Grown People (FGP), an online literary magazine about the thick of life. Twice a week, I publish essays that explore the kinds of moments and experiences that make even adulthood feel like another awkward age: looking for love…

IT IS OCTOBER AND HOT, midway through the slow bleed of summer’s end in North Carolina. We park the car in a strip mall. My husband takes our two sons to browse a temporary Halloween shop. I go into the adjoining Harris Teeter grocery store and drop off a prescription for Abilify, an antipsychotic, at the pharmacy. I wait in front of a shelf of Pepto-Bismol and its lookalikes. We’ve decided to tell our older son that Dr. S. has given us all new vitamins. His is clear, and Dad’s, mine, and his younger brother’s are pink, and they all taste terrible! My armpits grow slippery; I fear that the smell of my body is insulting the metallic purity of the store. Everything is lined up perfectly and clearly labeled.…

It is our inward journey that leads us through time—forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge.— EUDORA WELTY, ONE WRITER’S BEGINNINGS 1. I have been babysitting my student’s two-year-old boy for the last three hours, while my student and his wife go out for the night. The boy is bubbly. He has the habit of bouncing on his toes when he is excited, and he is excited about everything. He’s discovered language, and I marvel at how his mouth and tongue wrestle with words. His vocabulary grows by the hour. He has devoured the words I’ve…