ISSUES | fall 2023

The Curious Past   The past is such a curious creature, To look her in the face A transport may reward us, Or a disgrace.  – Emily Dickinson Jonathan Rosen’s…    read more

The Fetch  Joanna Pearson    Sebastian Marks, whom I knew from medical school, called my office and left a voicemail saying he wanted to curbside me on one of his…    read more

Wilderness Survival  Genevieve Abravanel   Water is Life I had mostly tuned out the noise of YouTube in the living room when Candy asked me for a condom. I stared at…    read more

It May Be Forever  Aaron Gwyn    July 3, 1863  Gettysburg, Pennsylvania  He sat the varnish roan on the crest of Cemetery Ridge, staring through his field glasses at the…    read more

Forensics  Richard Bausch  Earlier, at a murder scene involving hoarders in a decaying old house on Maple Street, Detective Casado happened upon a prosthetic leg with a gray woolen sock…    read more

Cornette     The flying nun was real. Few of us  knew that. In 1620 in her habit  of wanting to be ethereal, when ether  meant high reaches of sky &…    read more

Orr Hot Springs     We don’t stay long in the baths.  The air turns cold after dark, and we cook  in the communal kitchen.  Back in the cabin, we lie…    read more

Accident  Gregory Martin  It had rained all day, warm for January in Montana. It was dark now, the temperature dropping, the road turning to black ice. I was driving to…    read more

When English Departments Were Actually Hip . . . for Me, Anyway  Peter LaSalle   A fine spring afternoon in 1981, and I was heading with the writer Dave Ohle across…    read more

On Norman Mailer  Bill Barich  There was a time not so long ago when the mere mention of Norman Mailer’s name created an instant buzz in literary circles. You couldn’t…    read more

Maud Allan and the Price of Fame Kristine Somerville When Alfred Butt booked Maud Allan for a two-week engagement at the Palace Theatre in London in 1908, he added women-only…    read more

Edward Hopper and the Art of Voyeurism Kristine Somerville Edward Hopper didn’t wait for inspiration; he searched for it during his daily walks around New York City. He moved at…    read more

Whose Life Is It, Anyway?: Lives of the Poets and the Evolving Art of Biography  Andrew Mulvania    The art of biography, we say—but at once go on to ask,…    read more