Contest Winner for the Edwin Way Teale Award for Nature Writing (2022) I moved to Oregon during the dreadful forest fires of 2020. I moved out of Oregon during the even more dreadful forest fires of 2021. I came and went in smoke so thick that nobody noticed. As my…
Tag: creative nonfiction
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Blurring Boundaries: Challenging Our Compulsion To Categorize Writing
Emerging writers often struggle with the urge to make their writing fit an ambiguous mold of perfection. Luckily, Jess Gallagher has advice…
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What Is Creative Nonfiction?
By Alex Mika Last year, I enrolled in a course, as many irresponsible undergraduates do, not knowing what the hell I was getting myself into. It was called “Creative Writing: Poetry and Creative Nonfiction.” Poetry, I knew. Nonfiction, I knew. But creative nonfiction? It felt like a doublespeak term out…
The Road to Hell By August Jones (2017)
When I was seven, we made poetry books in school. I wrote two poems about my childhood dog, one about my grandpa, and one about 9/11. The rest were gibberish. On the cover, I drew broken hearts, storm clouds, a syringe, and my mom crying in the den. My dog…
Splitting By Alyssa Palazzo (2017)
Left I. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. A slender Italian with olive skin and a swollen stomach sits across from me. We are on a train rushing to Manhattan, and her feet are propped on the red duffel that sits at my knees. Her long…
i think i dreamed you by Aryanah Haydu (2017)
day 1 We met and though I was elsewhere involved, I knew that he would be the sweetest thing my eyes would ever reach. He had a long term girlfriend but still I couldn’t take my eyes from his toiled blonde hair those anesthetic blue eyes. He looked full to…
Guilt Treatment by Noah Bukowski (2017)
Aetna Creative Nonfiction Award Undergraduate Winner (2017) The form said that every article of clothing we wore that day had to be white, even our undergarments. My dad wasn’t into this kind of thing, so he had normal clothes on and was going to drive around for most of the…
Musings of a Curious Newbie By: Breanna Patterson
I’m an amateur writer. I’ve clawed out my own precious corner of my school’s Creative Writing Program and it is in this space that I am continuously attempting to prove myself. That’s the issue with writers: we sit in front of our keyboards, we psychoanalyze our own characters, and we…
“A Man and His Beard” by Carleton Whaley (2015)
I had just survived an encounter with a grease fire in my house which had burned off parts of my hair and beard, as well as most of the paint on my door. My friend Dan was with me, and after we both cleaned spilled oil off the floor he…
A Dinner with Rigoberto Gonzalez
I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Rigoberto Gonzalez April 16th, 2015. Prior to this dinner, I sat, front row, at his reading at the UConn Co-Op (brought to our campus but the Creative Writing Program). He read excerpts of his novels and discussed his experiences…