Blog

Dinner Talk

By Edvige Giunta   |  June 12, 2017
The asparagus grew in the Sicilian garden, and my mother made frittata that was sometimes lunch, sometimes dinner, sometimes snack...

This Is It

By Natalie Tomlin   |  June 5, 2017
1998. We stole it at night, one of us running across a lawn we had scoped out beforehand. With a firm kick, I popped it out neatly and ran away with it under my arm like a football, never really breaking my stride. The runaway car was there, waiting...

Happier Than He Has Any Right to Feel

By Karen Donley-Hayes   |  June 1, 2017
It may seem a foregone conclusion that Should I Still Wish, by John Evans, would make worthwhile reading. Evans is a Stanford University lecturer, memoirist, and winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize for Young Widower: A Memoir, in 2014. His writing has set him apart. What is not unique, however, is the subject of this memoir: death. Unfortunately, just about everyone has the misfortune of knowing and loving someone who has died or is dying, and more than a few of us have been compelled to write about our experiences. It’s an arguably over-worn subject, but Evans’s story doesn’t disappear into the middle of the pack.

Reunion

By Scott Russell Morris   |  May 29, 2017
You were in the restroom, so you didn’t witness the reunion...

Shame and Drum

By   |  May 22, 2017
In the Midwestern auditorium, a tired Richard Ford reads a fiction about Grand Central Station to a ticketed crowd as tired and sparse as his scalp. He is old and disappointed, and he is reading about old disappointment...

What Matters

By Isaac Yuen   |  May 15, 2017
Thursday is "Cosmic Night" at the space centre. I am waiting for three friends by the giant crab outside. The late George Norris designed the twenty-foot sculpture. Stainless steel pincers grasp for the sky.

Yield

By Kelly Miller   |  May 8, 2017
Waiting at a red light after dropping off videos. I've nosed my car onto the cross walk, hoping it will trigger the light to change more quickly...

One Era Ends. Another Begins.

By Sebastian Sarti   |  May 5, 2017
When the past doesn’t suit you, from what do you build the future? It’s a question that lumps at the throats of many twenty-somethings who know their lives will not follow those of their parents. Though Leslie Lawrence is well past her twenties, she uses the same question to animate her book of essays, The Death of Fred Astaire, an eclectic collection that ranges over decades of its author’s unexpected life.

YES

By Michael Fischer   |  May 1, 2017
Anthony’s text just says, “YES.” I’ve decided to change my flight to Boston, to move it up five days. He’s floundering, just doesn’t sound right; the 25th could be too late. Sooner. Have to get there sooner...

Kinetic Energy

By Sam Brighton   |  April 24, 2017
Weeks after California first legalized queer marriages but before the voters snatched them away in 2008, my girlfriend introduced me to the dyke march...

Saturday Night

By Don Dussault   |  April 17, 2017
Every day I flash on scenes and sounds of Fallujah. There are ways of grounding them...

Kerria

By Jenny Apostol   |  April 10, 2017
“Cheerful!” she said, “What is it?” Then recognizing the compact rows of marigold trophies lining spray upon spray arcing over the yard, “Oh, kerria, that was my mother’s favorite.” A moment of silence for one mother’s mother gone twenty years...

The Kingdom of the Sick

By Elizabeth Dark   |  April 7, 2017
My best childhood friend, Vanessa, suffers from debilitating chronic pain. She has seen multiple specialists, tried numerous treatments, and been diagnosed with a handful of conditions, all of which perhaps come close to naming her experience, but never fully...

River Teeth Journal Issue 18.2

April 6, 2017
Featuring writing by Zachary F. Gerberick, Lauren Hobson, Brenda Miller, Julie Marie Wade, Michael Downs, E.A. Farro, Thomas Larson, Andre Dubus III, Amanda Bestor-Siegal, Kerry Muir, Reg Darling, Krista Christensen, and Brian Castner.

Bottled Memories

By Stephanie Eardley   |  April 3, 2017
Golden jars glisten. Forty-nine quarts of autumn ripeness and summer’s bronze made sweet by the kiss of blizzards to come. Like a mother waiting for the reassuring cry of her newborn, I pine for the pop of jars sealing...

River Teeth 2014 Book Contest Winner Receives 2017 PEN Literary Award

March 30, 2017
In 2014, Angela Morales and her essay collection The Girls in My Town was selected by bestselling author and final judge Cheryl Strayed for the River Teeth Nonfiction Book Award. The collection published by University New Mexico Press in 2016, has now received the 2017 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for Art of the Essay as well. This prestigious award was presented at a live awards ceremony on March 27, 2017.

A Dress for the Wedding

By Lisa Romeo   |  March 27, 2017
You are modeling dresses and your husband votes for the one with the bouncy hem and V-neck. "It shows your nice cleavage!" "Yeah, for everyone." But in fact, you like your cleavage, and it's good to like something about your body...

Brenda Miller

March 24, 2017
Brenda Miller is the author of An Earlier Life, Who You Will Become, Listening Against the Stone: Selected Essays, Blessing of the Animals, and Season of the Body.

Thomas Larson

March 24, 2017
Thomas Larson is the author to The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative and The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber’s "Adagio for Strings."

Andre Dubus III

March 24, 2017
Andre Dubus III is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, and the novels Bluesman, House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days, a New York Times bestseller and the memoir, Townie. His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994, The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999, and The Best of Hope Magazine. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for fiction, The Pushcart Prize, and was a Finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Editor's Notes, Volume 18, Number 2

By Dan Lehman   |  March 24, 2017
Narcissism is much in the news these days, what with the present exemplar-in-chief posing almost daily reminders of the sins of self-absorption and grandiosity. Still, before we dismiss too glibly this comb-over phenomenon, we might as well admit that narcissism can be a charge leveled with some merit at memoir writing and its related nonfiction forms. Memoir or ME-Moir? Guilty or not?

Amanda Bestor-Siegal

March 24, 2017
Amanda Bestor-Siegal is based in Paris, where she is working on a novel. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Threepenny Review and Salon.

Brian Castner

March 24, 2017
Brian Castner is a nonfiction writer, former Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer, and veteran of the Iraq War. He is the author of All the Ways We Kill and Die and the war memoir The Long Walk, which was adapted into an opera and named an Amazon Best

Krista Christensen

March 24, 2017
Krista Christensen's essays have appeared or are forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Harpur Palate, Hippocampus, Word Riot, and elsewhere.

Reg Darling

March 24, 2017
Reg Darling lives in Vermont with his wife and cats. When he isn’t writing, he paints and wanders in the woods. He was an outdoor writer of sorts in a previous literary incarnation, but has wandered off into the rest of his life.

Michael Downs

March 24, 2017
Michael Downs’s books include House of Good Hope (University of Nebraska Press), winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, and The Greatest Show (Louisiana State University Press)

E. A. Farro

March 24, 2017
E. A. Farro is a scientist and artist along the Mississippi River in Minnesota. She has a PhD in geology and has spent a lot of time living in the wilderness. She is working on a novel and a weekly online collaboration, Science Love Letters. ​​

Zachary Gerberick

March 24, 2017
Zachary Gerberick is a MFA candidate in creative writing at Florida State University.

Lauren Hobson

March 24, 2017
Lauren Hobson is a graduate of Tulane University. She lives, works, and writes in Portland, Oregon.

Kerry Muir

March 24, 2017
Kerry Muir holds an MFA from Vermont College of the Fine Arts, where she studied with Robin Hemley, Philip Graham, and Brett Lott. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Kenyon Review, Crazyhorse, Quarter After Eight, Willow Springs, and elsewhere.

13-2 (14)

14-1 (14)

15-2 (14)

18-2 (13)

18.2 (2)

19-2 (13)

angela morales (2)

awards (1)

book contest (6)

book review (107)

cheryl strayed (4)

john w. evans (1)

pain woman takes your keys (1)

should i still wish: a memoir (1)

sonya huber (3)

the death of fred astaire: and other essays from a life outside the line (1)

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