50.2 Feature: “Close to the Slaughterhouse” by 2023 Nonfiction Contest Winner, Nadine Monem
Nadine Monem is an Egyptian-Canadian writer and editor. She graduated with an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from Birkbeck (University of London) in 2021, and since then her work has been published or supported by Tin House, The Kenyon Review, Catapult Books, The...
“I wrote a weird, little guy essay”: Sophie Ezzell on Creative Nonfiction, Nostalgia, and Prioritizing Kindness in Art
Sophie Ezzell is a queer Urban Appalachian writer. Her nonfiction has been nominated for multiple Pushcarts and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sun, River Teeth, Black Warrior Review, New Orleans Review, and others. Sophie received her MFA from Oklahoma State...
From the Archives: “The Empty” by Panpan Song
This much was true: nothing very bad happened. Nothing big.
45.2 feature: Craft Essay by Sophie Paquette
Sophie Paquette is from Bloomington, Indiana. Her work has appeared in The Rupture, Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, Split Lip, Heavy Feather Review, and others. She is a freshman at Columbia College in New York. Resisting Palatability: on “Rot” I love gross...
Sneak Peek: Missing File #7: The Ortolan Bunting by Alison Powell
Missing File #7: The Ortolan Bunting Alison Powell from BWR 45.1 In 1996 former French President Francois Mitterand invited thirty guests to his last supper. One was delighted to attend and offer condolences, admittedly a delicate balancing act. President...
The Best Lighting for My Body Was at the White Horse Inn and Bar, Oakland, California
“I am moved by the geography in this piece. Not just the geography of a landscape — also the geography of body, of gender, of family. The speaker enters with high stakes and manages to traverse the entire narrative with the stakes remaining high, emotional, and at times painful. “When I’m pressed, I go with boy: a category that can’t last forever” is the line that sat on my skin well after my reading of this piece was done. A firm and nuanced consideration of boyhood, manhood, mothers, and the bright and complicated intersection of all those things.”
From the Archives: fragments from RECONSOLIDATION by Janice Lee, 2012 Nonfiction Contest Winner
There is a thin film of muteness over everything I now encounter, “ghost” just another word for “mother,” just another word for “memory,” just another word for “gone.”
43.2 Sneak Peek: An excerpt from LIMNOLOGY: A MEMOIR by Sally J. Johnson
I am an unreliable narrator but that would mean more if I were a man.