In the mid-seventies, before the textbook crisis hit Kanawha County, and preachers started Christian schools in church basements all over the valley, I walked down the street to Elkview Elementary School every morning, a new building and an old building on the banks...
1. An Entrance When I graduated from college, I found myself with the full gamut of adult responsibility hefted onto my shoulders in an instant: my parents would not be paying my way going forward. With the clarity of mind that comes from having no savings, a degree...
I was cooking dinner when I heard voices outside. Donald and D’Quon were on the stoop. “Can I borrow your bike?” asked Donald. He’s 12 and too short for it. “Mmm, I don’t think so,” I responded. “I’d like to be there when you ride it because you’re so small.” D’Quon,...
This week we bring you “Strangers in a Strange Land,” an all creative nonfiction package of essays and flash prose that revolve around culture, travel, The Other, and personal growth. So grab your passport and let our writers take you on a trip from Haiti (“Eldet”) to...
Our indie lit community is suffering today because many of us are doing an awful lot of talking, but not nearly enough listening. I'm as guilty as the next person. I'm complicit too. But I am not here today to talk about Vanessa Place or her tone-deaf Twitter feed (a...
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When it appeared in 1937, Margaret Mitchell's sole novel, Gone with the Wind, was a publishing sensation, selling one million copies in its first six months and winning its author that year's Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, as the fiction category was then known. The...
I was in 8th grade when I read Gone with the Wind. The book had a sexy cover: a black-haired, busty, white beauty in a 19th century dress struggled against (or towards) a dark-haired mustached man, who leaned over her with hooded eyes. I felt like I had found a...