Who Is My Mother, Who Are My Brothers?
By Essay Issue 61
This essay will appear in Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical, an anthology from Cascade Books, edited by Hannah Faith Notess. ON THE DAY of my baptism, my father stood at the back of the church—hung-over, or quite possibly drunk even at that early hour—and shouted, “Hooray for Sara!” as…
Read MoreMaking It Strange
By Essay Issue 61
The following four short sermons were delivered at the Glen Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, between July 28 and August 2, 2008. All Manner of Travesties: Genesis 4:1-17 The hazards of the creative act are the loam out of which true form emerges. There is no way of achieving true form without opening…
Read MoreSkin Boat
By Essay Issue 63
Skin Boat: Acts of Faith and Other Navigations The following essay is excerpted from a new book of the same title from Gaspereau Press (www.Gaspereau.com). TODAY I believe in God. A visiting friend and I were listening to a jazz trio one Sunday morning in an Anglican church. The trio led off with a…
Read MoreCure
By Short Story Issue 65
BECAUSE IT WAS a Monday, the day their father, Pastor Eino Hililla, spent eight and sometimes twelve hours preparing the Sunday morning sermon, Lowell led his younger brother Jonas through the parsonage yard, past the cemetery. Past the dark walnut trees, through a thicket of manzanita, down to the dark tongues of water where they…
Read MoreThe Cathedral of Barcelona
By Poetry Issue 65
In 1907, at forty-three years of age, Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo published his first book of poetry, titled simply Poesías (Poems). Already well known in Spain as a prominent intellectual and the rector of the University of Salamanca, by this time Unamuno had produced novels, essays, and works of philosophy. Yet in the verse…
Read MoreThe Myth of Independent Film
By Essay Issue 66
IT STARTED with a phone call. “Sweet D, I’m coming to California. I want to interview you for my new book.” Nobody ever called me “Sweet” except my Davidson College roommate, John Marks. Evidently he was on the prowl, in search of his next story. I was intrigued. “Why me?” I asked him. “Because you…
Read MoreWine for Those Who Faint
By Essay Issue 68
I DECIDED that if I was going to read the Hebrew Bible, I was going to read the whole thing. Every word of it. No skipping over or skimming the genealogies, the instructions for building the temple, or the details of animal sacrifice. I bopped through the intricate plots of Genesis and Exodus, my rule…
Read MoreSeeing Through the Darkness: Georges Rouault’s Vision of Christ
By Essay Issue 67
A number of recent events suggest a revival of interest in the work of Georges Rouault is underway. Three in particular are worth noting: In 2008 a major exhibition, Mystic Masque, curated by Stephen Schloesser, was held at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College; a year later a joint exhibition of work by…
Read MoreNothing Happens: Everything Happens
By Essay Issue 68
THEY WILL ALL LEAVE, first my brother-in-law, who is frank about his tastes, and then the others, borne away on several tides of pretext—the bathroom, pots on the stove, the freshening of drinks—from which none return. Now it’s just me watching, lying belly down on the bed where I used to sleep with my wife.…
Read MoreA Conversation with Gina Ochsner
By Interview Issue 72
Gina Ochsner is the author of the short story collections The Necessary Grace to Fall (Georgia) and People I Wanted to Be (Mariner), as well as a novel, The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight (Portobello/Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt). Her awards include the Flannery O’Connor Award, Oregon Book Award, Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and fellowships from the National…
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