Blog : Articles
A Wildly Funny Life Story -- I, Too, Admire Your Shoes!
| December 1, 2015 "I want to write the moral history of the men of my generation," wrote Flaubert to his friend Mademoiselle Leroyer in 1864, talking of what would become his semi-autobiographical novel, Sentimental Education....Substitute women for men, memoir for novel, feminism for nineteenth-century bohemianism, and place our young-to-middle-aged protagonist in a green miniskirt in a Sun Belt college town. There you have, more or less, the themes and plot of Debra Monroe's new memoir, My Unsentimental Education, which updates Flaubert's novel for our own suburban, gender-redefining times.
Loosen Up
| November 1, 2015 A couple of months ago, I curled up in chair in the corner of my living room to begin reading Dinty Moore's latest book, Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals. The book, as you can probably guess from the title, is a writing guide in the form of an advice column. In it Moore fields tongue-in-cheek questions from 20 contemporary essayists on topics such as grammar, the writing life, why so many writers write about writing, and how to recapture the humor of a cocktail party story without having to get drunk again.
Editor's Notes, Volume 17, Number 1
| October 30, 2015 One day last spring my co-editor, Dan Lehman, and I were emailing back and forth--with me in Ohio and Dan in Taiwan--discussing River Teeth and a writer we were excited to be publishing in this issue. And then Dan said something that knocked me flat: “He reminds me of the late Charles Bowden.” I had not known about Chuck’s death until that second, and I still don’t know how I could have missed the news. Chuck Bowden died on August 30, 2014, at the age of sixty-nine. Too damn young. Too damn soon.
Podcast Interview with Glen Stout & Jeremy Collins
| October 12, 2015 This episode of Gangrey: The Podcast features Glen Stout, long form editor of SB Nation and Jeremy Collins who was featured in this year's Best American Sports Writing.
An Inner Exuberance
| October 1, 2015 With this review, River Teeth begins an occasional series of essays on nonfiction books we believe deserve to be read, whether again or for the first time. We are calling it "Neglected Nonfiction Classics." One of the most poignant, absorbing autobiographical memoirs I’ve ever read is this gem from 1943, The Little Locksmith.
Podcast Interview with Kim Cross and Karen Bender
| September 30, 2015 On this episode of Gangrey: The Podcast, Matt Tullis talks with Kim Cross, author of What Stands In a Storm: Three Days in the Worst Superstorm To Hit the South's Tornado Alley; and with fiction writer Karen Bender, author of the short story collection Refund, which is long-listed for a National Book Award. In "Required Reading," Dave Stark offers his thoughts on J.R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar.
Podcast Interview with Tyler Cabot
| September 16, 2015 This week's episode features Tyler Cabot, an articles editor for Esquire Classic, which now includes access to every issue Esquire has ever published. Cabot talks about finding new ways to tell and sell stories. Plus, host Matt Tullis shares his nonfiction narrative "The Ghosts I Run With." And in Required Reading, freelance writer D. Rossi tells us why we should all read Brian Ives’ piece “How Bruce Springsteen Got His Groove Back."
Here's One for the Bookstores
| September 1, 2015 Each writer in Days Like This responded to the prompt, “My _________ From Hell.” Each essay or story, in turn, depicts the epiphany that comes in the midst of a day from hell. Or a job from hell. Or a girlfriend, an amputation, an acne problem from hell so severe that it drives you to snort heroin in your father’s basement. This, fill in the blank, was the absolute worst. And this is where the writer ended up, afterwards.
Podcast Interview with Nathan Thornburgh and David Caswell
| August 12, 2015 This week's episode has three segments, starting with Nathan Thornburgh, a chief editor and publisher of the website roadsandkingdoms.com. Thornburgh talks about his story "The Root of All Things," which will appear in the fall issue of River Teeth. Matt also chats with David Caswell about his Structured Stories news database, and recommends some "Required Reading."
What's Left from the End Times
| August 4, 2015 To begin her new book, Joni Tevis, the author of the equally unusual, The Wet Collection, quotes the Midwestern novelist, Sherwood Anderson, in an epigraph: “Just say in big letters, ‘The World is on Fire.’ That will make ’em look up.” So she does and so do we.
Climbing the High Ridges and Stumbling
| July 1, 2015 I should be clear: I think writing well is terribly hard work, and I admire anyone who endures it. Me, I’ve yet to publish a book of any kind, and I don’t teach writing or literature at any college or university, so maybe you’d just as soon stop reading right here. After all, I’m hardly a professional book reviewer. But because I’m a professional educator, an environmental educator, I do know this: it all comes down to creating an authentic experience.
Podcast Interview with Michael Graff
| June 17, 2015 Female skydivers, street races, and more in this edition of Gangrey the Podcast. Matt Tullis talks with Michael Graff, the editor of Charlotte Magazine and freelance writer for SB Nation Longform, Washingtonian Magazine, and Politico.
Turning the Tables: How One Woman Put Food in Its Place
| June 10, 2015 Andie Mitchell is a “foodie.” She is a serious, hard-core “foodie,” a fact that comes through in delicious, descriptive detail on virtually every page of her 232-page memoir, It Was Me All Along.
Podcast Interview with Mike Wilson
| June 8, 2015 Mike Wilson is finishing up his first few months as the new editor of the Dallas Morning News. He's also worked as an editor for ESPN and the St. Petersburg/Tampa Bay Times, fostering talented writers and reporters like Ben Montgomery, Michale Kruse, Kelley Benham French, and Pulitzer Prize winner Lane GeGregory.
Why We're Here: River Teeth Nonfiction Conference 2015
| May 21, 2015 One week out from the River Teeth conference, conference director Sarah M. Wells reflects on why we gather for writers' conferences.
Podcast Interview with Brooke Jarvis
| May 20, 2015 Matt Tullis interviews Brooke Jarvis, longform narrative and environmental journalist. Jarvis discusses recent stories about the oil industry in Ecuador and deep sea mining.
It's About Time
| May 5, 2015 On the first page of Ongoingness, Sarah Manguso tells us that she started keeping a diary because she didn’t want to lose anything. So she wrote—800,000 words over twenty-five years. But you won’t see a word from those diaries in Ongoingness, The End of a Diary...
Where Have All the Overmedicated Mermaids Gone?
| April 6, 2015 Elissa Washuta’s memoir is a twisting, chameleon-like work of reportage, highly poetic at times, showing how cultural forces and tragic events have left their tracks on her body and mind. The search “for an identity to sink into” in a savage, selfish world is at the heart of this book.
Podcast Interview with Brandon Sneed
| March 19, 2015 Brandon Sneed wrote the book "Behind the Drive: A Story of Passion, Dreams, Demons, and Highway 55, the World's Next Favorite Burger Joint."
A Son Coming Home
| March 1, 2015 Steven Harvey, in his marvelous memoir, The Book of Knowledge and Wonder, is on a journey to discover and understand his mother who committed suicide in April, 1961, when Harvey was eleven years old. Reflecting on her act, Harvey observes that it “had exploded in my life like the flash of a camera at close range, darkening everything around me and casting me into blindness, and when the light returned she was gone. . . . "
Editor's Notes, Volume 16, Number 2
February 26, 2015 The title character of Heckert’s piece—flinty, cantankerous, desperately ill—simply refuses to do what we expect of her, either as a literary character or as a real person. And, as River Teeth readers know, it is the knife’s edge between those worlds that endlessly worries and fascinates us.
Keywords: 16-2, editors notes
Which Way Next?
| February 1, 2015 In his brief essay, “Dead Weight,” Eric Freeze describes a walk he takes with his dog, Zeke, a walk that ends horribly. He sees a police cruiser descending a hill, his Dalmatian blundering into its path, and there’s nothing he can do but shout and witness the inevitable. This scene reveals a tension that runs through many of the fifteen essays in his first collection of essays, Hemingway on a Bike: the threat of lurking disaster in the most peaceful of moments versus the potential in such moments for sudden and wonderful insight.
Podcast Interview with David Giffels
| January 28, 2015 In this episode of Gangrey: The Podcast, Matt Tullis talks with David Giffels, former newspaper reporter and author of the book, The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt.
A Beautiful Savage Game
| January 7, 2015 After forty years of watching the game, playing fantasy football, and mourning yet another Oakland Raiders’ loss, Almond no longer indulges his love of watching football and his latest book, Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto, explains why.
The Infinitely Unending Art of Judith Kitchen
| December 1, 2014 Judith Kitchen, writer, editor, critic, and teacher, died at the age of 73 on November 6, 2014, after living with metastasized breast cancer, the subject of The Circus Train. I choose the word “living” deliberately because Kitchen’s presence—her aliveness on the page—is a swirling force behind many memorable passages in the book...
Podcast Interview with Vanessa Grigoriadis
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| November 19, 2014 In this episode of Gangrey: The Podcast, Matt Tullis talks with Vanessa Grigoriadis, an award winning contributor for national magazines. She talks about pop culture, journalistic research and some of her recent articles.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Women Authors
| November 3, 2014 Since its inception, Shebooks’ digital collection of downloadable fiction, memoir, and journalism has grown to over 70 books, each of which the publishers say can be read “in an hour or two.” Their library is composed of works by both new and established writers. We review three selections in this month's book review.
Podcast Interview with Earl Swift
| October 27, 2014 In this episode of Gangrey: The Podcast, Matt Tullis talks with Earl Swift, the author of Auto Biography: A Classic Car, An Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream. The book tells the life story of a 1957 Chevy that, at the beginning of the book, is falling apart.
To the Body Born
| October 1, 2014 “I started my martial arts training on the day the Gulf War began,” Peggy Shinner recalls. It was a discipline she would go on to master and teach. Moving across the page in her essay collection, You Feel So Mortal, with the same agility she took to the polished wood of the dojo floor, Shinner explores the flesh and blood experience—hers and ours—of having a body.
Podcast Interview with Eli Saslow
| September 11, 2014 Eli Saslow is a reporter at the Washington Post. Earlier this year, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his series of stories on food stamps in a post-recession America.
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