Category: Nonfiction

by Heidi Klaassen On Vashon Island, Washington, there’s a tree that’s famous for having grown around a bicycle. Despite a compelling story about a young man leaning his bike against a tree before going to fight in World War I, the truth is it was abandoned by a local boy in 1954. He’d received it…

by Alaina Scarano It starts in Peru, in January. It’s the month of rest, of nesting, of resolutions and starting over and dreaming up the new people we can be. I want to be at home on my couch as snow falls out the window behind me. Instead I’m wiping the sweat from between my…

by Tina Mortimer The Achilles tendon rests between the calf and the heel. It’s the largest and strongest tendon in the body. It’s also the most vulnerable to injury due to its limited blood supply and the tension it endures when you flex your calf muscle. This is where M, your on-again, off-again high school…

by Tippy Rex People like to buy secluded homes in the woods far from goods and services, and then demand that you come and stay at these homes.      I can tell that the guest rooms will be cold and that I will fail to muster the appropriate level of enthusiasm for the black-capped chickadees on the…

by Matthew E. Henry Content warning: racial language and violence       This world is white and they are black.            —James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time He knows the myth, but he is the model minority. The all-around A-student: attentive, astute, Asian. He’s good at math and science, but also garners excellent grades and respect in my sophomore…

by Brenna Womer A sixteen-year-old high school junior goes to Zales in the mall with her boyfriend’s mother to pick out the ring she wants him to propose with. Both the girl and the mother know there’s only one diamond in the case he can afford—a fourth-carat stone in white gold—so they pretend it’s the…

by Kami Westhoff 1. Start from the place you now call home, where cherry blossoms erupt overnight and the scent of lilac lulls you into thinking maybe everything is going to be okay. A doe tracks you from the overgrown flowerbed, her eyes stitched to the blur of your body. She’s pregnant, stiffens as you…

by Harrison Geosits My mother is Filipino, fresh off the plane, and I am her half-breed son, the firstborn son, but I did not inherit her Pacific Islander DNA; I am not thin and tan and woman-hungry like her father and brother and nephews and other son, I do not have the same un-grown-up-ness; I…

by Elizabeth Vignali The northern white rhino will be extinct. My oldest daughter will get braces. I will go on a date with a social worker. I will throw away 540 sandwich bags. I will throw away a beat-up Barbie dollhouse too trashed to be donated. I will throw away forty-seven toothpaste caps, white-ridged floating…

by Matthew Mastricova When I was 12, I had to draw a scale model of myself in class. I did my best to obscure the measurements from my classmates, writing them as small and crooked as eyelashes. When I shrank myself down to a size that would fit on an 8.5×14” sheet of paper, I…