Table
of Contents: Volume
2 Spring 2004
Editor's
Prize
Winners Red Metallic Let Your Sanctity Stain Ready for the House Sunday Drivers Long Island Ice Tea Europa at the Cusp American Humour A Dangerous Reputation Simple Theories
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Our Calling:
When I moved from Missouri to Massachusetts in 2000, one of the first places I visited was Walden Pond. And while I was drawn there as a teacher of literature, I kept coming back as a teacher of writing. Here was a perfect creative nonfiction assignment, after all: Read the book about Walden past, then visit the Walden present. Moreover, Thoreau’s feisty declaration in Walden is the ideal attitude for creative nonfiction writers, who must fearlessly use the first person “I do not propose to write an ode to dejection,” Thoreau wrote, “but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbours up.” This publication is inspired by Thoreau’s metaphorical rooster, modeling an attitude to which young writers must subscribe if they are going to dare to put their work out there in the world. That work need not be about nature, but it does need to operate out of the creative nonfiction genre, blending personal storytelling and scene-setting with an underlying psychological and/or thematic progression. It’s a kind of writing that often isn’t taught in workshop format for undergraduates. Yet in four years of existence, our submissions have grown steadily in quantity – approximately fifty this time around – and quality. This growth comes because of brave and talented student writers – and because of writing teachers who care enough about their students to push them toward wider audiences. The essays in this volume survived several rounds of discussion, during which they were stripped of author’s name and academic affiliation. They made it into the review despite To all our submitters, we say thanks, and, furthermore, as long as you are undergraduates, Mike Land
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