Reviewed by Carolyn Roy-Bornstein We can all remember where we were during those early days of the coronavirus pandemic. When the news was chilling. When information was scarce. When the problem seemed to be someone else’s… until it was everyone’s. In early March 2020, I was on a ferry going to Martha’s Vineyard for a…
By Lisa Cooper Ellison [This double-feature is a collaboration between our interviews and reviews team.] My first introduction to Sue William Silverman came through a craft essay on the Brevity Blog on the two voices in creative nonfiction. I was so impressed with the article, I bought her first craft book, Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s…
Together, the editorial teams of Fourth Genre, Hippocampus Magazine, River Teeth, and Under the Gum Tree announce the line-up for what’s become a much-awaited annual offsite event at the AWP — our affectionate shorthand for the annual conference sponsored by the Association for Writers and Writing Programs. This 2024 AWP Conference & Book Fair takes…
In honor of the shortest month of the year which includes the loving-est day of the year, we’re launching the We Love Short Shorts Contest for Flash Creative Nonfiction! Throughout the month of February, we’re inviting flash nonfiction writers to submit short essays (micro memoir) of up to 250 words; there is no theme. Our…
As we settle into the new year, we’re taking a moment to reflect on 2023. We’re so proud of the work our volunteer team has done to produce six amazing issues and lots of content in between. We’re grateful for our contributors and guest writers for making what we do possible. We’re also incredibly thankful…
Interview be Leslie Lindsay In I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir (Mad Creek Books, November 2023), Susan Kiyo Ito writes the story of her beginnings from a retrospective gaze. Who was she ? Who were her birth parents ? Why does she look not quite Japanese, not quite Caucasian? As she pieces together the…
Reviewed by Ruth Bonapace Many memoirs relive a traumatic childhood. Few confront in detail the very nature of memory and how our emotions cannot make an objective, tidy package of trauma. In Brittany Means intelligent debut, Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways, (Zibby Books; October 2023) she boldly warns us not to fixate over…
Reviewed by Melissa Oliveira A Petit Mal: A Mother’s Healing Love Song (Eyewear Publishing, 2023) by Ana María Caballero, winner of the International Beverly Prize for Literature, begins by frankly stating what it is not. “Eventually, I will make you happy,” Caballero writes, “But it will be a process. A procedure, but not a medical…
Interview by Amy Fish In The Hunger Book, Agata Izabela Brewer evokes her Polish childhood under Communism, where the warmth of her grandparents’ love and the scent of mushrooms drying in a tiny apartment are as potent as the deprivations and traumas of life with a terrifyingly unstable, alcoholic single mother. Brewer indelibly renders stories…
Reviewed by Layla Khoury-Hanold It’s rare to read a recipe that starts with the direction “Begin near tears,” but that’s exactly how essayist Sheila Squillante begins the second chapter in All Things Edible, Random and Odd:Essays on Grief, Love & Food (Clash Books; November 2023), a collection of essays on grief, love, and food. The…
