Nonfiction Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Leaving Earth by Laura Johnsrude I was on a third-year medical school rotation in the pediatric intensive care unit in January, 1986, on a team caring for a baby girl with Listeria meningitis, spinal cord stiff and curved into a C-shape, head reaching back for her heels, as if stargazing. She was in an isolation room in a crib, lying on her side; she couldn’t lie ...

Nonfiction Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Hospitals and Cemeteries by Kat Kiefer-Newman stand outside the tall building with its many additions and renovations. I don’t want to go inside. But I can’t turn around now. I won’t turn around now. This is a thing I need to do, like I need to breathe, I need to eat. The entrance wing of Riverside Community Hospital is over six stories high, extensions and expansions ...

Nonfiction Issue #2: Pain September 17th, 2019 September 17th, 2019 Nonfiction Letter from the Nonfiction Editor: Writing Through the Pain Walking the Labyrinth | Cindy Carlson Fall Risk | Alysia Constantine Leaving Earth | Laura Johnsrude Hospitals and Cemeteries | Kat Kiefer-Newman Your Therapist is an Addict | Jane Seskin Traces | Janice E. Rodríguez The Episodes | Ilze Duarte My Empty Embrace | Rebecca Ryall

Nonfiction Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Forgetting Aiden by Cyndy Cendagorta hen I search for my son in a song, no words say what I would sing for him, if I could sing. No lyrics speak to who he is to me, only the ones I write in my mind when I hear something beautiful and heartbreaking. My son, Aiden, who has intellectual disabilities, is his own song that I had to ...

Nonfiction Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Talking Headaches by Pam Munter have a tumor inside my head. It’s not very big. It sits on the outer part of the brain itself, just to the left of center. It has a rhythmic, tongue-twisting name: meningioma. I don’t know how long it has been in there but perhaps for decades, a permanent resident. When the physician informed me about this, I was not at ...

Nonfiction Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 In the World by Caitlin Farrell he Cook County Jail is a massive 96-acre compound nestled on the south side of the city of Chicago, although you wouldn’t know it was there unless you were looking for it. Like most jails, Cook County is embedded into the neighborhood that many of its inmates inhabit. Mexican flags hang over the shops along the street. A Popeyes sits ...

Nonfiction Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 1,392 by Emily Duren Names in this piece have been changed. he only reason I’m alive today is because of the diligence of my mother and the willingness of a YouTube vlogger to share her life with the world. It was late 2013 and just about four years since I had started taking Keppra, an anticonvulsant, to keep my seizures in check. Only it wasn’t working. After not ...

Nonfiction Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Unmanageable Care by Shara Kronmal on’t call me ‘ma’am.’ It’s ‘Doctor,’” I snap at Barbara, a nurse. I am trying to get insurance to authorize treatment for Sam, my patient, who is severely depressed and needs a course of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), often called shock therapy. Sam and I often joke about ECT. “Time to get zapped?” I ask him when he seems low. “Can’t I just stick ...