Fall 2016

Fall 2016 Editor’s Note

Ask any fiction writer and they will likely tell you there are glimpses of themselves in nearly every character they create. Their obsessions, desires, and fears are often tucked away in the shadows and clefts of their characters, a small part of the fictional whole. Readers are left to wonder…

Gospel River

Despite my animosity toward Sunday school and church: the huge helmets of grey hair capped by tight buns, flung back in hallelujahs; the spirit-filled oxblood wingtips loping to and from hard seats, and all the cloth— giant flowery dresses billowing up aisles, flapping dark suits and long ties lolling like…

Gone to Water

God didn’t give us no lakes in Canard County. Too much downhill, too much push to the water. So when the government decided we could use some help, they dammed up our rivers and they made us lakes. Had us make them. The people I come from were good enough…

Utopia Drive (Reece)

Erik Reece. Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America’s Most Radical Idea. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. 368 pages. Hardcover. $28.00. Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America’s Most Radical Idea by Erik Reece provides an opportunity to step away from current fractious political discourse and explore…

The Memorial

The road devours the trees and the mountain, like fruit, excretes the miracle of convenience. At the end of the trail a memorial looks over the valley, where mountains crash into a shoreline of silvery pastures shot through with pink evening light, where factories ride the fog like freighters on…