Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2018 i Creative Nonfiction

OF THE MORE THAN one dozen books I have researched and written, the project that made the biggest impact on me, personally, took place over a six-year period beginning in the mid-1980s, during which I immersed myself in the world’s largest organ transplant center. This was early on, long before transplantation had become the accepted “miracle” procedure it is today. Back then, the mere idea of swapping body parts was anathema on religious, cultural, moral, ethical, and scientific grounds; everyone had an objection. There were even some critics who argued that those few pioneer surgeons who persisted—in the face of criticism and literal excommunication—were desecrating the human body and creating monsters, alien creatures that would somehow disrupt the world order, whatever that was. Even Louis Washkansky—the recipient of the world’s…

SOME YEARS AGO, in a workshop, I wrote about my sister’s self-destructive adolescence. I recounted her recklessness with boys and alcohol, the anger that erupted like a geyser inside her, and her hell-bent desire to run away—which she did by joining a traveling carnival when she was 16. The scenes brimmed with my own shock and confusion, and, as difficult as the subject matter was, I was sure it was the best thing I’d written. But in class, a writer I deeply respected made some general comments, then leaned back in her chair. She nudged the manuscript on the table away, as if proximity itself was a problem. “It’s too much,” she said, shaking her head sadly. Instead of feeling drawn into the narrative, she was repelled by it. The…

DR. HARVEY LOTHRINGER, a family practitioner, has been performing illegal abortions for years. His medical office is under police surveillance, but Barbara Lofrumento’s parents may not know this when they bring her to him on a Saturday morning, the 2nd of June, 1962. She’s five months pregnant. “I’m not touching her. She’s too far along.” “You’re going to take care of this problem,” Barbara’s father, Dominick, says. It sounds like a threat. Dominick knows of Harvey’s reputation and record, can turn him in at any time. When he learned of Barbara’s pregnancy, Dominick asked around for the name of an abortionist. Harvey’s Queens office is about 15 miles from Dominick’s home in upscale Westchester, New York, but he was told the doctor would travel to his house. Dominick lives with…

TO BEGIN IS to admit an infatuation, a longing, a love. A beginning signals that one has moved well past being merely interested and is now immersed in what is most likely an obsession. To begin connotes more than falling in love: to begin is to commit, to stay, to hold. To write is to encounter a love affair. And as we groom ourselves and struggle to appear our most attractive to our beloveds, so too do we, as writers, want to present ourselves to our readers at our very best. Or perhaps we get caught unawares: our ragged, disheveled, unsure, untidy, and ugly selves are what make someone else love us, for in writing there is always, inevitably, the ugly. Love, in writing, is mostly a one-sided love. Either…

my account I was ten when my dad changed his name from Rich to Rick. That one little letter was the first quiver of a seismic shift. Fluctuation deviation transformation supervening in the silent spaces in between while we waited in our places around that dining table built of distressed oak. Sometimes my parents rose before dawn to pray together, hand in hand. My father’s hands were the biggest I ever saw. Wide and strong though also rough like sandpaper and cracked raw. But I’m certain it was my mother, with her hands so cold and small, who held on the tightest. She often told us in those first years after the divorce that she didn’t mind he was gay; it was learning he was broke that ended it all.…

KYLE ANGER (www.kyleanger.com) is a 2-D mixed media artist who utilizes an ever-expanding variety of media to create intensely layered, intuitive abstractions. Due to his love of nature, biological forms, and experimentation with artistic materials, his pieces evolve into detailed amalgamations of internal and external life. Anger’s work has been included in a number of group exhibitions in the past year. Anger’s interest in art was fostered at a very early age by his mother, an elementary school art teacher. He earned his BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009 and his MFA in painting from Boston University in 2012. Originally from northeast Connecticut, he currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, where he maintains a studio at Radiant Hall in the Lawrenceville neighborhood.…

A FRIEND OF THE WRITER Kim Stolz once jumped onto subway tracks to retrieve a dropped iPhone. Telling the story in Unfriending My Ex and Other Things I’ll Never Do, Stolz reports being horrified by the risk—yet adds, “If this same friend dropped her iPhone onto the subway tracks tomorrow, she wouldn’t hesitate to attempt this feat again. And neither would I.” Welcome to the Digital Age, when a phone is worth a leap onto the tracks, and people are reluctant to put down their devices even while driving. Our words, photos, money, and medical records live online. People walk with heads bowed, eyes riveted to the gadgets cradled in their hands. But we’re only beginning to grapple with the changes that digital technology brings. Beneath its lure, I sense…

A SIX-POUND, NINE-OUNCE BUNDLE of original sin, I was doomed upon arrival. In my infantile state, I failed to realize the totality of my holy burden. According to the Catholics, I was responsible for the mistakes of Adam and Eve, people I’d never met. Until I was baptized, I risked an eternity in Limbo, and in my first wee weeks, I was forbidden to leave home. I didn’t object when the priest doused my naked head with his sanctified holy water, making my miniature soul safe. I stayed sound asleep while his whispered prayers washed away my affliction. And just to be sure of my salvation, a tiny crystal rosary was hung around my neck, forever tethering me to an unseen God. My mother was the driver of Catholicism in…

THE HUMAN BODY is its own country, complete with its own laws and its own language. Navigating its diverse terrain requires a spirit of adventure and an ability to translate the blueprint our chemistry has written inside us. Over the past century, collaborative efforts, advances in technology, and a full embrace of the scientific method have created a detailed map of this country. This dramatic expansion of our scientific knowledge base has had significant consequences for human health, but blank spots still remain. My husband and I stumbled onto one of them halfway through my first pregnancy. When I was twenty-five weeks pregnant, my gynecologist used a handheld Doppler to measure the fetal heart rate. She said the baby’s heart rate was “on the low side of normal” and sent…

minnesota community Can a life be defined by who shows up for the funeral? If so: A student from forty years ago. His gay fathers’ group. Clients. Employees. Neighbors. Friends. Seven of his eight living siblings, and their spouses, too. Nieces and nephews galore. The former nun he’d known since college, who arranged the service and led the songs, and the former nun’s sons and their wives, singing, with guitars. The eldest granddaughter, age ten, who had not seen him since she was three, because her own father had said he was already dead. And my husband and two daughters and my younger brother and his wife and a whole gang of his friends and my adopted sister and my closest friend and my friend from sixth grade’s dad, whom…

neesers7 Today I fold three sympathy cards into their envelopes. If only sorrow could be tucked away so easily. 26 Oct 17 sevans_writer I soak up the quiet of the house before everyone awakes. When I finally hear tiny footsteps upstairs, I feel not joy, but panic. Another day as a parent begins. 6 Jan 18 WilliamReagan The bent and broken roses under the bus seat might seem sad if the smiling woman wasn’t salvaging the good bits to make a bouquet. 29 Sep 17 RachelEFurey I was feeling invisible this morning. Then I sneezed on the bus and seven strangers said “bless you.” 4 Nov 17 pbsharkey Before checking into the hospital for heart surgery, he slipped a list of our investment logins onto my desk. A final love…