BREVITY 30 has pulled into the station with a new collection of essays involving planes, trains, and cars, subways, airports, and bus stops. Take the journey with new and returning authors Rigoberto González, Sierra Bellows, Maggie McKnight, Richard Robbins, Amanda Fields, Kianoosh Hashemzadeh, Christina Olson, Richard Gilbert, Robin Behn, A. Papatya Bucak, Jane Bernstein, and Shane Borrowman.

Also, new Craft Essays from Judith Kitchen, Gretchen Clark and Kelli Russell Agodon and Book Reviews from Jamie Barber, J. Luise, Tracy Seeley, and Julie Foster.

SKETCH
By Rigoberto González

I notice the guy sketching even before I sit down, but it’s not a strategic decision at all. When I have a choice I try to sit facing the eye candy, and this guy’s not even close to handsome. 

DEATH OF A CITIZEN ABROAD
By Sierra Bellows

I look for the dead among my fellow travelers—along the malarial coast, the dry riverbeds of the inland desert—and I wonder if the same siren song draws us here.

TONIGHT
By Maggie McKnight

Later, we took the first pictures of my belly. I took most of them myself, sprawled on the couch, my shirt pulled up to expose my bare skin.

DRIVING WILLIAM STAFFORD
By Richard Robbins

The only thing we talked about was bread. How to keep the crust from splitting in the oven's heat. How to keep the rise from falling. What the kneading did for the hands.

NEW CRAFT ESSAYS

In our Craft Section, Gretchen Clark Interviews Kim Barnes on the art of short nonfiction, Judith Kitchen offers “Ten (or Twenty) Points on Publishing, Plus a Few Playful Tidbits,” and Kelli Russell Agodon considers rejection and all of the cool kids wearing paisley minis.

CAIRO TUNNEL
By Amanda Fields

I was warned about taking the Metro in Cairo. My upper-class students had warned that there would be staring, pushing, insults. And that was just in the women’s car.

SUMMER IS OVER
By Kianoosh Hashemzadeh

There will be a table of four attractive men next to the opened garage windows and you will walk by and look only once. You will think the one with the glasses is the cutest.

DUCK, NORTH CAROLINA
By Christina Olson

This is the first year in three that we have not begun our vacation with a funeral: first my father's mother. Then his father. This year, the only stop on the way down is at Hardee's, for cinnamon-raisin biscuits.

KATHY
By Richard Gilbert

Kathy did all the plowing, disking, and cultivating. She protested, since she wasn’t paid extra, and Karl said, “You want to go to college don’t you?” He didn’t teach her how to turn off the tractor, so she ran it dry.

INSTRUMENTAL
By Robin Behn

So she had granted this flute to the girl, and a price had been agreed upon that only she and the girl knew about. It was something like the price of a life-saving operation or a dowry or college or a trip to the moon.

STUDIES FOR A DRAWING IN RED
By A. Papatya Bucak

How can I convince you, that despite its everything, I love the world?  Shall I paint my nails, dye my hair, rouge my cheeks, shroud myself in my living room curtains—red red red? 

A BEAR IN TEL AVIV
By Jane Bernstein

"That night, I wasn't thinking about the security fence that was being constructed or the execution of Sheik Yassin, or Hamas leaders vowing to wage holy war on the sons of Zion any more than I was thinking about my own ultimate demise.

ICKY PAPPY DIED
By Shane Borrowman

He’d been buried in Montana, and his grave—while next to my great-grandmother’s—was unmarked and expected to remain that way. No one in Idaho wanted him buried there, and no one in either state would spring for a tombstone.

NEW BOOK REVIEWS

On our Book Review page, reviews of Jay Griffiths’ Wild: An Elemental Journey,  Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Patricia Klindienst’s The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans, and Tricia Tunstall’s Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson. Reviews in this issue: Jamie Barber, J. Luise, Tracy Seeley, and Julie Foster.