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Writing Instructions for Non-Native Speakers by Robert Anthony Siegel

April 26, 2019

We are placed in a guest house on campus, a sort of rotting cottage out of a folk tale, hidden in a world of its own behind a ten-foot wall of bamboo and flowering bushes. I sprawl on the bed, staring at the water stains on the ceiling, sweating. I’ve never experienced jet lag this intense.

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In Nonfiction Tags Robert Anthony Siegel, language, English as a second language, native speakers, Nonfiction

We, Little Griefs by Brit Barnhouse

April 10, 2019

Who knew sand could inspire We
baked in the sun I climbed into caves

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In Nonfiction, Multimedia Tags Brit Barnhouse, creative nonfiction
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On Choosing Ignorance by Kara Vernor

March 19, 2019

Growing up in a liberal, college town, I frequented the art house theater where I stood in the ticket line alongside college students with labret piercings and grey-haired white couples and what I assumed to be serious environmentalists in thin-rimmed glasses and fleece outerwear.

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In Nonfiction Tags Kara Vernor, On Choosing Ignorance, Nonfiction
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Rainbow Sugar by Erin Langner

January 29, 2019

I’m worried we’re too late. Mustangs and Astro vans and stretch SUVs brim over the Peppermill’s parking lot because there’s no such thing as an unbeaten path. It’s already hot enough to feel the asphalt cooking the soles of my cheap-leather, criss-cross sandals as we walk through the double glass doors. But this is our last-chance-weekend escape, our meet-up between the coasts, on the Las Vegas Strip.

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In Nonfiction Tags Erin Langner, rainbow sugar, Las Vegas, Nonfiction
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Discovery Kid: Longing for Pig Hearts, Stories, and the “Right” Kind of Knowledge, by Sarah Hoenicke

January 22, 2019

My siblings stand “at attention,” and salute me before I dole out their chores on individual, handwritten lists. We each have an alias printed on laminated name tags. We go on bike rides. I instruct them to form a line behind me, oldest to youngest, and then circle around to ride behind my littlest sister. And there we are: a wobbly snake; our helmets five points of backbone. It is in this way that our childhood sits in my memory. Rarely am I an “I” so much as a “we.”

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In Nonfiction Tags Sarah Hoenicke, knowledge and discovery, education, Nonfiction
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Balling by Jerald Walker

December 1, 2018

A private college in Boston was making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Along with being criticized for its lack of racial diversity, one of its black faculty had filed a discrimination lawsuit, and another had complained to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. A third had quit. It was rumored that the president, under whose watch these troubles festered, was being forced to resign. And so when I saw their ad for a professor of creative writing, with a specific appeal for applicants of color, I could not believe my good fortune. The college, it seemed to me, like a flowering boll of cotton beneath the hot Georgia sun, was ripe for the picking.

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In Nonfiction, Print Tags Jerald Walker, Balling, creative nonfiction, The Normal School, 2018 fall vol. 11 issue 2
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Unpredictable by Patrick Madden

December 1, 2018

Each sentence seems its own aphorism, a particle afloat humming in harmony with the others.

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In Nonfiction, Print Tags Unpredictable, Patrick Madden, Nonfiction, 2018 fall vol. 11 issue 2
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Farewell, Cassini, How Far You've Come by Gabriela Denise Frank

November 27, 2018

Cassini’s impending doom stirred an inexplicable sadness in me. As the broadcast went on, I felt the bitter irony of human gains: here, we create a technological marvel who faithfully increases our knowledge—for two decades, Cassini has delivered images and data of thrilling celestial phenomena to our fingertips—and, in return, we send it on a suicide mission.

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In Nonfiction Tags Gabriela Denise Frank, Cassini, Farewell Cassini How Far You've Come, Nonfiction
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Smallmouth by Justin Hocking

November 13, 2018

So many things fell into place after that dental exam. The twenty-seven previous years of painful shyness. My trouble pushing words through this tiny oral aperture. Everyone always asking me to speak up. The dentist helped me understand that my social anxiety has a physical component, right here on my face.

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In Nonfiction Tags small mouth, Justin Hocking, social anxiety, Bigmouth Competition, Angolan Jaw of Awe, Nonfiction

Curses by Berry Grass

November 6, 2018

TNS stands in solidarity with the trans community. As a show of support, we are proud to reprint and celebrate the work of Berry Grass.

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In Nonfiction Tags Berry Grass, World Series, Chicago Cubs, billy goat, Curses, Nonfiction
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Learning How to be Female by Annie Lampman

November 1, 2018

As a child of the late 70s and early 80s, I was convinced that glossy “magazine women” were a distinct subspecies of human females who came out of the womb painted like colorful aliens, born complete with purple eyelids, black-lined eyes and thick-coated lashes, bright pink cheeks, and shiny-plump red lips. I studied them for hours, fascinated by their colorful flawlessness compared to the plain imperfection of “normal women.”

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In Nonfiction Tags Annie Lampman, women, women studies, being a woman, female, how to be female, Nonfiction
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Edge of a Piece of Cloth, Made Strong by Holly Willis

October 30, 2018

If I could I would sew for my sister a coat of soft leather. I would ply malleable pink hide for an effort so vital, but a gabardine twill is perhaps more practical. Gleaned from the coats of animals, culled from the cocoons of silkworms, scavenged from the seeds and leaves and stems of plants, remnants, vestiges, reckoning, reckoning.

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In Nonfiction Tags cloth, needlework, Holly Willis, Edge of a Piece of Cloth Made Strong, Nonfiction
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On Becoming a Person of Color by Anne Liu Kellor

October 23, 2018

She is used to defining herself in the negative—not quite this or that; or as divided—only half or part. She is mixed, which means that she has never seen herself entirely as Chinese, nor entirely as white. As a teenager, her friends were mostly white, in a school that was mostly black and white, so she identified with the white kids. Her friends would eagerly ingest her mom’s Chinese leftovers after a night of partying (where she’d teach them how to say, We are going to drink a lot of beer tonight! in Mandarin); she was their fun Asian friend, different, yet rooted in the same pop culture, white culture.

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In Nonfiction Tags becoming a person of color, person of color, Anne Liu Kellor, Asian-American history, Nonfiction
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Neighbor by Virginia Marshall

October 18, 2018

Virginia Marshall is a writer and audio producer. Her work has been published in The Harvard Review, Brevity, Atlas Obscura, and has aired on NPR and WBUR.

Photo by David Hoffman '41 on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA
In Multimedia, Nonfiction Tags Virginia Marshall, Joan Didion, Garrison Keillor, Gayle King
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No One Here Named Me by Suzanne Roberts

October 9, 2018

At Burning Man, you’re supposed to resolve your issues with a Black Rock Ranger, someone who can come and negotiate problems on the playa, but I was beyond that. I wanted to call someone with handcuffs and a squad car, someone who could take him away. But would they? I didn’t know.

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In Nonfiction Tags Suzanne Roberts, Burning Man, No One Here Named Me, Nonfiction
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Nurse Dog by Sarah Kasbeer

May 1, 2018

You feel like you’re wearing your body as a suit and suddenly you want to unzip it and leave it by the bedside. You feel smothered by something you can only identify as yourself.

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In Nonfiction, Newsletter, Print Tags Nonfiction, Nurse Dog, Sarah Kasbeer, 2020 October, 2018 spring vol. 11 issue 1
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Chilean Wild Baby Pears by A. Kendra Greene

May 1, 2018

There is hardly a museum I visit where I don’t want to touch things.

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In Nonfiction, Print Tags Chilean Wild Baby Pears, A. Kendra Greene, Nonfiction, 2018 spring vol. 11 issue 1
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A Genius Moment, Or an Accident by Joe Bonomo

May 1, 2018

Such attention to arrangement and production details became Merriman’s signature on the hundreds of compositions—not only jingles and commercials, but corporate musical events and theme-park-ride music—he produced over an impressive fifty-year career.

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In Nonfiction, Print Tags Joe Bonomo, 2018 spring vol. 11 issue 1
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Hallelujah the Blind Gifts by Katherine E. Standefer

May 1, 2018

Oh Hallelujah the blind gifts, the foundation of all privilege. Hallelujah what we might call innocence, the idea that before things got fucked up they were once good.

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In Nonfiction, Newsletter, Print Tags Nonfiction, Hallelujah the Blind Gifts, Katherine E. Standefer, 2020 November, 2018 spring vol. 11 issue 1
"If you didn't want to raise the dead (which we most certainly did not) then you couldn't have sex in the upstairs bedroom, the one with the red painted floorboards and the mattress from 1934, so choked up with dust that lying on it was like lying o…

"If you didn't want to raise the dead (which we most certainly did not) then you couldn't have sex in the upstairs bedroom, the one with the red painted floorboards and the mattress from 1934, so choked up with dust that lying on it was like lying on a bed of skin ..."

The Long Night by Matt Jones and Jess E. Jelsma

April 10, 2018

Jess E. Jelsma is a doctoral candidate of creative writing at the University of Cincinnati and a graduate of the University of Alabama MFA in Creative Writing program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Catapult, Post Road Magazine, The Rumpus, The Normal School, Indiana Review, and various other publications. 

Matt Jones is a graduate of the University of Alabama MFA in Creative Writing program. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic, Post Road Magazine, Slice Magazine, McSweeney's, Wigleaf, The Journal, and various other publications. 

Photo by Saraia77 on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
In Nonfiction Tags audio essay
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