Essays & Ethnography

Thomas MaschioFebruary 15, 2018Essays & Ethnography, General, Issue 2No comments

Alone in his canoe, a New Guinean man begins to sing, hoping his song will charm fish to his net. Although the sea is dead calm, this is small comfort to him, as its glassy surface is a closed door and reveals nothing of its bounty. It shows only his reflection. The fisherman hopes to [...]

Anna KovatchevaDecember 20, 2016Essays & Ethnography, Folklore, Issue 2No comments

I originally delivered this essay as a craft talk for undergraduate student writers attending the 2016 James Madison University Creative Writing Conference; it has been lightly edited. As I told those assembled, no thirty-minute talk on this subject could possibly be comprehensive. There are many ways to write weird work that matters—this piece doesn’t even begin to touch on […]

On Mythologizing and Autofiction

Melissa R. SipinDecember 20, 2016Essays & Ethnography, Folklore, Issue 2No comments

Movement(s) of (Poetic) Identity

Ruda: Ten Remedies

Vickie VértizDecember 20, 2016Essays & Ethnography, Folklore, Issue 2No comments

a play

Scribble Scholar Was Here

Clay ShieldsDecember 8, 2016Essays & Ethnography, Issue 2, KinfolkNo comments

Notes of a Vandal Academic

Kinfolk

Joy PriestDecember 8, 2016Blog & News, Essays & Ethnography, Issue 2, Issues, Kinfolk1 comment

—souls connecting and bonding, as one poet here would have it— are rooted in place.Are we from the same place? you might think when you meet someone who gives you a familiar sensation. My body is only one place my spirit has been over the course of the universe. *** I call my grandmother to […]

On Beauty

Rebecca HazelwoodDecember 1, 2016Essays & Ethnography, General, Issue 21 comment

1. The frame is not big enough. The camera cannot capture desire. The light is not enough to slow Sabrina’s hands as she fingers the beads on her dress. The aperture is not wide enough to speed up the shutter or narrow the depth of field. Still, this is but a fraction of a [...]

Goldfish Obituaries

Nick MancusoDecember 1, 2016Essays & Ethnography, General, Issue 2No comments

My goldfish, two of them, died last week. These two, glittering, golden life-forms, John Fitzgerald ‘Jack’ and Kilgore Trout, are gone. I’m not particularly sad. They were only goldfish; but for some reason I’ve been trying to not think about them since they passed. I woke up that morning, shaking off a hangover headache and [...]

Prison Bird Songs

Bruno Renero-HannanDecember 17, 2014Essays & Ethnography, Issue 11 comment

Image: Hannah Sneddon The following is an excerpt from an oral history interview with Agustín Luna Valencia, the former mayor of San Agustín Loxicha, a Zapotec community in Oaxaca’s Sierra Sur, and one of the seven remaining Loxicha Prisoners who remain incarcerated since 1996. The interview was conducted in the Central Penitentiary of Oaxaca in […]

Necrology: the Dogs

Chelsea BiondolilloDecember 17, 2014Essays & Ethnography, Issue 11 comment

Our dogs don’t die; like dissidents, they disappear. Lobo was returned while I was at school, to a log-and-shingle house in the woods. He howled too much for the city, I was told, later. Pepper was stolen—by dog fighters, Tom mutters as though he knows it to be true. Her jaw was wide and she [...]

About Grief