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Candy Thief

Rounding the corner with grocery basket in-hand, I spot my father staring at a display of candy. At a distance, I watch as he grabs candy bars off the shelf and slides them inside his coat, so absorbed in the act of stealing, he doesn't notice me approach. I tap him on the shoulder and he turns. Startled, he begins to empty his pockets.
Art Lesson

They saved it for Fridays. Every teacher had the same projects. Fall: iron leaves between waxed paper. Winter: chalk snow scenes on black construction paper. Spring: draw daffodils. Except for Miss Malik...
Apparent Magnitude: Negative 28, Brighter Than the Sun

We're in church and the minister is reading a story about Maria Mitchell, America's first female astronomer, when my son whispers, "When I grow up, if there's a planet left that nobody has been to, I'm going to be the first person to step on it."
Galaxies

Say that this space on her forehead where you smooth tangled tresses to plant a kiss once, perhaps twice for good measure, smells like daisies, grassy and warm...
Thought Paths

"Spit" is Patrick Madden's lead essay in his latest collection, Sublime Physick. The next eleven pieces (seven previously published) shift from forceful ejection of saliva to empathy, recognition, physics, and elevators. Three compositions focus on lost children. Cave paintings, Tarot cards, time, voyages--these subjects, too, with a little music and mortality thrown in plus photos and illustrations. Male zipper negligence? Why not?! The topics range far and wide, proving no theme is off limits for this wordsmith.
Tornado

When I was a little girl, younger than you are now, I shared a bedroom with Aunt Catherine, who was still a baby. Grandpa was gone on business ...
All Our Travels

Once we're in the air Dale tells me he is retired military--he graduated high school the same year I did. Beside him Beth is from Boise--she once broke down near Bentonville, where my best friend now lives. Small world, we say, when we uncover these coincidences, but what we really mean is that we feel small in it...
The Uncomfortable Place Between Vulnerability and Voyeurism

B.J. Hollars means it when he says, "This is a test." He tests us from the opening essay when he puts us in the middle of a tornado in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. More specifically, he puts us in a bathtub in the middle of a tornado in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. We huddle there with Hollars, his pregnant wife and his dog. All: vulnerable...
On the Last Day of Our Friendship

We take shifts now. I arrive just as your mom is leaving. I want to hug you but you are bird bones, and I am a dinosaur, big and clumsy, breathing all over everything, and loudly healthy.
Hubby

It wasn't a nickname. It was her real, actual name. She'd been Hubby for eighty-three years...
Editor's Notes, Volume 17, Number 2

It's been a busy season here at River Teeth, what with selecting Rosemary McGuire's "Out West: A Season on Water" as the new River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize winner from among nearly two hundred book-length entries. Then, too, we have just put our seventeenth year of the journal to bed with the final selections to issue 17.2. Each year, we receive some 2,500 submissions to the journal and another two hundred or so full-length book submissions.
Keywords: 17-2
Graffiti the Walls

I want to graffiti the walls where my grandmother lives, white and sterile walls (egg-shell colored walls, as the nurses say), replace her sanitation lists with photographs, magazine spreads and paper clippings...
River Teeth Journal Issue 17.2

Featuring writing by Donald Mitchell, Fleda Brown, Jerald Walker, Sonya Huber, Joe Oestreich, Tim Hillegonds, Heather Gemmen Wilson, Gina Williams, Jan Shoemaker, William Torrey, Rebecca McClanahan, and Cate Hennessey
Keywords: 17.2
T-Shirts

A stack of t-shirts sits on my bureau: white, pale blue, yellow. The soft, bright colors of summer.
Jerald Walker
May 9, 2016Jerald Walker is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, recipient of the 2011 PEN New England Award for Nonfiction.
Jan Shoemaker
May 9, 2016Jan Shoemaker’s essays have been anthologized, featured on public radio, and have appeared in many magazines and journals including River Teeth, The Sun, Fourth Genre, The Colorado Review, Sufi Journal, and American Literary Review. She writes and teaches in Michigan.
Rebecca McClanahan
May 9, 2016Rebecca McClanahan has published ten books of nonfiction, essays, poetry, and writing instruction, most recently The Tribal Knot: A Memoir of Family, Community, and a Century of Change and a new edition of Word Painting: The Fine Art of Writing Descriptively.
Ascension Garden

The first time, you drive by yourself. You have some idea you are going there, but are still surprised that you know the way, without her, through the turning and turning driveways...
Fleda Brown
May 9, 2016Fleda Brown’s The Woods Are On Fire: New & Selected Poems will be out from University of Nebraska Press in 2017. Her eighth collection of poems, No Need of Sympathy (BOA Editions, LTD) and her collection of essays with Sydney Lea, Growing Old in Poetry (Autumn House Press) came out in 2013.
Keywords: 17-2
Cate Hennessey
May 9, 2016Cate Hennessey’s essays and book reviews have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Gettysburg Review, Fourth Genre, PANK, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee, she teaches at West Chester University.
Keywords: 17-2
Tim Hillegonds
May 9, 2016Tim Hillegonds earned a Master of Arts in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University in Chicago.
Keywords: 17-2
Sonya Huber
May 9, 2016Sonya Huber is the author of two books of creative nonfiction, Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), finalist for the 2010 Grub Street National Book Prize in Nonfiction, and Opa Nobody (University of Nebraska Press, 2008), shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize.
Keywords: 17-2
Donald J. Mitchell
May 9, 2016Donald J. Mitchell lives in Deming, WA, on land his great grandfather homesteaded in the 1880s. He’s lived there all his life writing poetry, short essays, and fiction.
Keywords: 17-2
Joe Oestreich
May 9, 2016Joe Oestreich is the author of two books of creative nonfiction: Lines of Scrimmage (co-written with Scott Pleasant, 2015) and Hitless Wonder (2012).
Keywords: 17-2
William Torrey
May 9, 2016William Torrey teaches Creative Writing and Literature at St. Andrew’s School.
Keywords: 17-2
Heather Gemmen Wilson
May 9, 2016Heather Gemmen Wilson is an award-winning author. She enjoyed a twenty-year career as a book editor before returning to school.
Keywords: 17-2
Beautiful Things Wins a Pushcart

Congratulations to Kate Levin! Her Beautiful Things column "Resting Place" has been selected for this year's Pushcart Prize.
2016 River Teeth Nonfiction Conference Features Dinty W. Moore and Elena Passarello

This year's River Teeth Nonfiction Conference will be June 3-5, 2016. Get ready for a weekend packed full of outstanding speakers, topics, conversation, and readings.
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