Blog

Mark Liebenow

August 28, 2013
Mark Liebenow is the author of four books, most recently Mountains of Light: Seasons of Reflection in Yosemite, which won the River Teeth Nonfiction Prize and was published by the Univ. of Nebraska Press. His essays, poems, and critical reviews have appeared in journals like the Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Fifth Wednesday Journal. His nonfiction work has won the Chautauqua and Literal Latte awards, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was named a notable essay in Best American Essays 2012.

Chris Offutt

August 28, 2013
Chris Offutt grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, a former mining town of 200 people in the Daniel Boone National Forest. He is the author of Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods, The Same River Twice, No Heroes, and The Good Brother. Chris has published over 70 stories and essays, including appearances in the New York Times, Esquire, GQ, and National Public Radio. He has received awards from the Mississippi Arts Council, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the NEA, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Granta Magazine included him in their list of the “Top 20 Young American Writers.” He wrote screenplays for HBO’s “True Blood” and “Treme”, Showtime’s “Weeds,” and TV pilots for Fox, Lions Gate and CBS. His TV work was nominated for an Emmy. He lives in rural Lafayette County and teaches at the University of Mississippi.

Beth Peterson

August 28, 2013
Beth Peterson lives and teaches in Columbia, MO. She has an MA from Wheaton College and an MFA from the University of Wyoming. She’s currently working on a book of essays set on glaciers, volcanoes and other disappearing landscapes.

Aaron Poor

August 28, 2013
Aaron Poor’s writing has appeared in Variations and Timberline. He is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Idaho and is working on a memoir. He lives in Oregon.

Seth Sawyers

August 28, 2013
Seth Sawyers’ writing has appeared in Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, Quarterly West, Fugue, Phoebe, The Baltimore Sun, The Rumpus, The Morning News, and The Millions. He has recently completed a memoir about growing up skinny and wild in Appalachia, and is finishing a novel about a ten-foot-tall office worker who discovers there is another like him. He teaches writing at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and is an editor at Baltimore Review. He has an MFA from Old Dominion University and was a Tennessee Williams scholar in fiction at the 2013 Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Debie Thomas

August 28, 2013
Debie Thomas holds an MFA from the Ohio State University, and her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review. She was a 2012 recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. She lives with her family in Palo Alto, California, and is currently working on a memoir about arranged marriage.

Helen Wallace

August 28, 2013
Helen Wallace teaches poetry and nonfiction at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her first collection of poems, Shimming the Glass House (Ashland Poetry Press), won the Richard Snyder Prize and a 2008 Florida Book Award.

Michelle Webster-Hein

August 28, 2013
Michelle Webster-Hein writes and teaches in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she lives with her husband and daughter. You can find her work (now or soon) in upstreet, Midwestern Gothic, Ruminate Magazine and Perigee, among other places. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Volume 15 Number 1

August 28, 2013
featuring work by Michelle Webster-Hein, Brian Doyle, Mark Liebenow, Jesse Bordoni, Chris Offutt, Daniel W. Lehman, Beth Peterson, Debie Thomas, Helen Wallace, Bettye Kearse, Aaron Poor, Katie Fallon, and Seth Sawyers, and an interview with Chris Offutt

"Proper Names Are Poetry in the Raw": Character Formation in Traumatic Nonfiction

By Dan Lehman   |  August 28, 2013
...I want to rekindle our desire for the complex truth of a written life. To do so, I wish to refocus our attention to what I believe matters about nonfiction, particularly nonfiction about trauma. I would never argue that facts don’t matter in nonfiction ... Yet I hope to prove that what really counts is the tangible human presence outside the text that competes with the nonfiction character inside the text.

Jesse Bordoni

August 27, 2013
Jessica Bordoni is from Ithaca, New York. Currently, she is a senior at the University of North Carolina Wilmington finishing an English degree in literary studies. Jessica will go on to receive her master’s degree in Creative Writing. This is her first publication.

Brian Doyle

August 27, 2013
Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He is the author, he thinks (some of them are small and quick and hard to see in the underbrush), of 13 books of essays, poems, nonfiction, and fiction, notably the sprawling Oregon novel Mink River. Among the peculiar honors which have come his way and confused him utterly is the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which still makes him laugh, although he got a free trip to New York City out of that, with a terrific dinner in a great jazz club, that was fun. His greatest accomplishment is that a small riveting woman said yeah (not yes) when he proposed marriage, that the Coherent Mercy then sent them three children from the sea of the stars, and that he made an all-star team in a really tough league in Boston, guys drove to the basket in that league, they lost fingers, man. See him after class for details.

Katie Fallon

August 27, 2013
Katie Fallon is the author of Cerulean Blues: A PersonalSearch for a Vanishing Songbird (Ruka Press, 2011), a finalist for the 2012 Reed Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment. Her nonfiction has appeared in River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Ecotone, and elsewhere. She has taught writing at Virginia Tech and West Virginia University, and co-founded the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia. Her first word was “bird.”

Bettye Kearse

August 27, 2013
Bettye Kearse is a pediatrician and writer living in the Boston area. Among her most rewarding experiences as a physician have been traveling to China on behalf of Wide Horizons For Children, an international adoption agency, and serving on the Board of Directors of From Roots to Wings, a community-based organization for grandparents and the grandchildren they are raising. Her commentary, “Our Family Tree Searches for Branches” appeared in the Op Ed section of the Boston Herald. She is currently working on a series of children’s picture books and completing a memoir, The Other Madisons: An American Griotte’s Quest to Redefine Her Lineage from A Founding Father.

Luke Dittrich and "The Prophet"

By Matt Tullis   |  August 25, 2013
In this podcast, Matt Tullis interviews Luke Dittrich about the story "The Prophet," published by Esquire.

15th Anniversary Reading at AWP

August 22, 2013
River Teeth is delighted to host a reading celebrating the 15th Anniversary of the journal at the AWP Conference in Seattle this spring.

The Art of Mulling: Steven Harvey and Kate Hopper

August 22, 2013
Over the next couple of months, we'll feature a presentation from the 2013 River Teeth Nonfiction Conference.

Stephen Rodrick and "The Misfits"

By Matt Tullis   |  July 23, 2013
In this podcast, Matt Tullis interviews Stephen Rodrick about the cover story "The Misfits," also called "This is what happens when you cast Lindsay Lohan in your movie" on The New York Times Magazine online.

2014 Conference Speakers Announced

June 28, 2013
We're delighted to announce our featured speakers for the 2014 River Teeth Nonfiction Conference: Philip Gerard and Brenda Miller!

Editor's Notes, Volume 15, Number 1

By   |  June 28, 2013
In the keynote address of the second annual River Teeth Nonfiction Conference, Scott Russell Sanders encouraged the audience of over 80 to write about where they are because, “Your place probably needs your art.”

Brian Mockenhaupt and "The Living and the Dead"

By Matt Tullis   |  May 21, 2013
During the River Teeth Nonfiction Conference this weekend, Matt Tullis, Journalism and Digital Media professor at Ashland University, interviewed Brian Mockenhaupt about his Byliner.com article, "The Living and the Dead."

Why We're Here: 2nd Annual River Teeth Conference

By   |  May 17, 2013
The River Teeth Conference this weekend brings many writers together in one friendly little town to have a conversation about story. Their words are sure to ignite my spirit and enliven my desire to get the story I need to tell down on paper in its truest and most artistic form.

Andre Dubus III "Writing and Publishing a Memoir" Wins a Pushcart

May 2, 2013
Congratulations to Andre Dubus III, whose piece, "Writing and Publishing a Memoir," published in River Teeth Volume 14, Number 1, has won a Pushcart Prize and will be reprinted in Pushcart Prize XXXVIII: Best of the Small Presses.

Harvey, Kerstetter Essays Chosen for Reprint in Best American Essays 2013

By Dan Lehman   |  April 18, 2013
Two essays first published in River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative Volume 13, Number 2 will be featured in Best American Essays 2013, the long-running series published by Houghton Mifflin Books and edited by Robert Atwan. Steven Harvey's essay, "The Book of Knowledge" and Jon Kerstetter's essay, "Triage" will appear in BAE 2013, scheduled for an October 2013 release.

Jesse Lichtenstein and "Do we really want to live without the post office?"

By Matt Tullis   |  April 15, 2013
Podcast interview with Jesse Lichtenstein. Jesse Lichtenstein wrote the story, "Do we really want to live without the post office" for the February issue of Esquire. In the story, Lichtenstein follows mail through the postal process in an effort to understand how it can get from one end of the country to the other for a scant 43 cents.

Tickets for River Teeth Conference Available

April 15, 2013
Tickets are now available for select events during the River Teeth Nonfiction Conference. A $10 contribution online will grant access to each of the evening events as well as the Scott Russell Sanders seminar. Guests may also contribute $10 at the door.

Kelley Benham French Discusses "Never let go"

By Matt Tullis   |  February 15, 2013
In this podcast interview, Matt Tullis talks to Kelley Benham French about her story, "Never let go," which is about the birth of her daughter. Juniper French was born at 23 weeks, six days and weighed one pound, four ounces.

Volume 14 Number 2

February 15, 2013
featuring work by Amy A. Whitcomb, Kirk Wilson, Sonja Livingston, Glenn Moomau, Philip Gerard, Marilyn Bousquin, Kathryn Wilder, Richard Goodman, Jackson Connor, and A. Sandosharaj

Editor's Notes, Volume 14 Number 2

By Joe Mackall   |  February 15, 2013
Are there too many memoirs out there? Are too many being written? Is enough, enough? After all, for the last twenty-five years we’ve read memoirs on every conceivable subject. Some great, some good, some fair, some poor.

Amy A. Whitcomb

February 15, 2013
Amy A. Whitcomb holds a Master of Science in Environmental Science and is completing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, both from the University of Idaho. Her essays and poems have appeared in several publications and anthologies, including High Country News, Flyway, Frogpond, and Tahoe Blues: Short Lit on Life at the Lake. In 2011, she was awarded a Bodie McDowell scholarship from the Outdoor Writers Association of America. She currently works as a writing consultant for graduate students.

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