Issue #18, 2001
Intimate Details
The essays published in this issue represent survival and change, expressed through dramatic stories and intimacy of detail. As editor Lee Gutkind writes in the issue's introduction: "One lesson that writers of all genres need to know is that the secret to making prose and poetry memorable and therefore vital and important is to catalog with specificity the details that are most intimate. By intimate I mean ideas and images that readers won't easily imagine—ideas and images you observed that symbolize a memorable truth about the characters or the situations that concern you."
In "Second Chances," Melissa Block, a breast-cancer survivor, is off on her own quest to Vietnam with a crew of plastic surgeons, while Philip Gerard's journey, "Adventures in Celestial Navigation," captures the intimacy of sailing and seeing blindly at night. Aine Greaney travels with her father on a mission of connection and maturity through a sensory panorama of Ireland. In "Bridges," Sarah Massey-Warren thrusts her readers into the stark and vivid reality of Elko, Nevada, while Russell Tomlin, in "Two Years," leads us into Togo, West Africa, on a Peace Corps mission.
This issue is out of print.
Table of Contents
FROM THE EDITOR: Beyond 9/11 Lee Gutkind ... read more
Notes on My Dying Ruthann Robson ... read more
Dots on the Page Susan Messer
Killing Chickens Meredith Hall
Second Chances Melissa Bloch
White Girl in Harlem Jennifer Jeanne Patterson
Silver Redhorse Hal Herring
Familiar Things Samuel F. Pickering
Two Years Russell Tomlin
Bridges Sarah Massey-Warren
Father Aine Greaney
Adventures in Celestial Navigation Philip Gerard
BETWEEN THE LINES: Report From a College Classroom: After the Terror
Contributors
Melissa Bloch
Melissa Bloch writes nonfiction and fiction. She lives in Nashville and is working on a novel set in the south of France. read more
Aine Greaney
Aine Greaney is an Irish native living on Boston's North Shore. Her work has appeared in various Irish and U.S. literary journals. She has... read more
Philip Gerard
Philip Gerard holds an MFA from the University of Arizona. He is the author of three novels and four books of creative nonfiction,... read more
Meredith Hall
Meredith Hall's memoir, Without a Map, was recently published by Beacon Press in 2007. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The... read more
Hal Herring
Hal Herring is a native of Alabama and has lived in Montana for the past 12 years. His writing has appeared in Field... read more
Susan Messer
Susan Messer has fiction and nonfiction published in Glimmer Train Stories, Triquarterly, North American Review, Colorado Review, Creative... read more
Jennifer Jeanne Patterson
Jennifer Jeanne Patterson received her MFA from Columbia University. She currently lives in Minneapolis, where she is working on her novel... read more
Samuel F. Pickering
Samuel Pickering teaches English at the University of Connecticut. Eleven collections of his familiar essays have been published, the most... read more
Ruthann Robson
Ruthann Robson, a professor of law and University Distinguished Professor at City University of New York, writes legal scholarship and... read more
Russell Tomlin
Russell Tomlin earned his MFA at Mills College in Oakland. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1981 to 1983 in Togo, West Africa,... read more