By reflex I turned to leave, but in the center of the open doorway stood the silhouette of a second man, holding a pitchfork across his waist as if to block my path.
(nonfiction)
Category: Nonfiction
Kafka can sit for hours on the corner of the balcony, the elbow, looking down on the busy intersection. On one corner, across from us is the Escher House, a three-story mansion now converted into cheap rooms.
(nonfiction)
…the promise of fulfillment rather than just a hole here or there or in several places at once…
(nonfiction)
Does literary fame play a role in your quest as a writer and if so, does it play a positive role, or a negative one?
(nonfiction)
Do you need to be a good person in order to be a great poet?
(nonfiction)
The work is not going well. Why is the work not going well? I think. Wait. I ran out of medication.
(nonfiction)
My parents had always had a copy of Kaddish, which my mother urged us to read, but refused to really discuss the book.
(nonfiction)
The winner of ACM’s inaugural Nonfiction Contest
My mother tells me stories about when she was little and then makes me promise not to tell anyone.
(nonfiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“My real education during my DePaul years occurred on Monday nights at a jazz club called Orphans…”
“It felt good to be in their brainy female world, which defied the patriarchal Latin culture under Franco.”
(nonfiction)
There’s joy on Easter, and that joy lasts a long time. And Lent, it’s not about food, it’s about self-sacrifice, humbling yourself before God. You’re saying, You’re the big guy. I’m the small guy.
It doesn’t matter which language you speak, because language does not influence your way of thinking.
When my family was escaping, my great grandmother saw that all of the grain that was collected from them was being thrown in the sea.
The older generation of course, they didn’t teach their kids about the horrors of Stalin, because they didn’t want them to have that memory.
(Dispatches from Ukraine)
Now I remember it like a dream, but it was terrible.
(Dispatches from Ukraine)
The rage rolls out of my gut like a stream of regurgitated frogs, leaving me purged and primed for violence.
(nonfiction)
This is the first piece in our new DEBUT section, which showcases the first literary work published by a writer, beyond a campus-only magazine.
“There were no pens allowed at Carrollton Springs because of the possibility of someone hurting themselves with one”
(nonfiction)
I began my story. I told him I was born in Italy and moved to Venezuela when I was eight years old.
(nonfiction)
With every photo either zoomed in or close-up, I tend to forget how small they are. Nudibranchs range from four millimeters up to 520 millimeters.
(nonfiction)
Too big, too small, just right? Pillows for lovers. Erogenous zones. Never used for feeding babies. Strap them down when they get in the way. Pinup worthy, so I once was told. Now they’ll be diminished, I’m leaving a part of me in the past.
(nonfiction)
But the answer, I like to think, is that the Raven Grill offers not so much “nevermore” but “furthermore.”
(nonfiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“Folklore across the African diaspora maintains that captive Africans were born with the ability to fly.”
(nonfiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“No, I went through one marriage,” Aunt Mildred insisted to the jury of her siblings. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
(nonfiction)
I trip on cobblestones sticking out of the earth like busted tombstones.
(nonfiction)
He knew the affair he was having with the composer, that it should have been me.
(nonfiction)
For a few years we took turns breaking each other’s hearts, casting each other away, reeling each other back in.
(nonfiction)
Can a town named Phoenix rise from the ash?
(nonfiction)
Beneath the tree, grasses of pale yellow and green commingle to create a neon shade reminiscent of Mello Yello, a soda from my childhood….
(nonfiction)
I was in Colorado because seventy-plus hour workweeks punctuated by martinis had swallowed me whole.
(nonfiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 