Essays

Creative nonfiction essays

Blogger Girl

By Lizzie Lawson | Published: October 15, 2018

I had lost so many hours to Wordpress, and what had I gained?

Posted in Essays | Tagged Blogging, Cooking, Travel | Leave a comment

February: Raccoons and Salmon

By Carolyn Dekker | Published: March 29, 2018

Mary Oliver’s poetry works in implicit contrast with our daily underestimation of the world.

Posted in Essays | Tagged Mary Oliver, Nature, Poetry | Leave a comment

Notes on Direct Action

By Sita Balani | Published: October 3, 2017

If you’re on every channel, they can’t pretend you don’t exist.

Posted in Essays | Tagged Activism | Leave a comment

Mapping a Country

By Akpa Arinzechukwu | Published: September 19, 2017

Am I cutting myself? Does the country hurt much? Why are you crying?

Posted in Essays | Tagged Christianity, history, Nigeria, Suicide, Trump Train | Leave a comment

This’ll Be the Day That I Die

By Kailee Marie Pedersen | Published: March 8, 2017

The lyrics were incomprehensible to me at the time, but I knew even then that I wanted to be Miss American Pie.

Posted in Essays | Tagged China, Music, New York, Pop Music, Race Relations | 1 Response

On Stuff

By Josephine Sloyan | Published: February 2, 2017

I feel like I’m in an abandoned Marshalls warehouse.

Posted in Essays | Tagged Consumerism, Hoarding, Reality TV | Leave a comment

Character Arcs for a Neoliberal World

By Julie Chinitz | Published: October 25, 2016

Housing Blocks courtesy Karl-Ludwig Poggemann on Flickr (hinkelstone)

This is what neoliberalism wants, a prisoner’s dilemma on macro scale.

Posted in Essays | Tagged Neoliberalism | 3 Responses

Balderdash

By Alyssa Pelish | Published: October 11, 2016

You could sense our tongues at the corners of our mouths as our pencils paused over the small squares of paper before us.

Posted in Essays | Tagged Family, Games | Leave a comment

Instructions for When It’s Too Late

By Kari Campeau | Published: September 20, 2016

Central Park Runner - photo by mckaysavage on Flickr

You have never thought of yourself as someone who is embarrassed by her body—you’re a college athlete!—but you will be, intensely so.

Posted in Essays | Tagged Food, Health, Sex | Leave a comment

Stranger on the Seine

By Micah McCrary | Published: February 3, 2016

Normally my being black makes my being American complicated, but in Paris I found myself perhaps saved by my nationality, by a particular foreignness, with my blackness possibly somewhat overlooked.

Posted in Essays | Tagged James Baldwin, Paris, Race Relations | Leave a comment

Where It Grows

By Rachel C. Lewis and Susannah Betts | Published: January 14, 2016

I’m standing in the grocery store balancing cloves of garlic in either hand. They are for my vagina.

Posted in Essays | Tagged College, Homosexuality, Marriage | 1 Response

Certifiable

By Caroll Sun Yang | Published: March 5, 2015

I was a seemingly innocuous, privately neurotic, stone-broke girl seeking hiatus from the soul-sucking world of fine art, writing, coolly inebriated boys and waitressing.

Posted in Essays | Tagged Letters, Psychology | 6 Responses