When the United States Narcotic Farm opened in Lexington, Kentucky in 1935, it aimed to rehabilitate drug offenders and equip them for a productive sober life. In the process, it became a place for jazz musicians to take a break and jam together. A Kentucky poet who grew up near the farm reflects on the […]
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Posted inNonfiction
Borrowed Babies
Five months into her first pregnancy, one writer pursues a research project about the history of home economics, as she struggles with her own concerns about motherhood.
Posted inNonfiction
The Girl I Didn’t Save
Cameron Dezen Hammon reflects on her frustrations as a Christian music minister for the terminally ill, unable to heal a cancer patient she cared for, and struggling to be compassionate at her belligerent Jewish father’s bedside.
Posted inArts & Culture, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Shelved: The Sound of Big Star’s Self-Destruction
As the band dissolved, they managed to capture their destruction in some dark, powerful music.
Posted inNonfiction
The Unreliable Reader
In Esmé Weijun Wang’s book of personal essays, “The Collected Schizophrenias,” it’s the reader, not the writer, who is an unreliable narrator.
Posted inNonfiction
Fugitive Justice
After stumbling upon the scene of the capture of an escaped murderer, clinical social worker Jennifer Lunden grapples with the polarities of innocence and guilt, social neglect and social justice.
Posted inNonfiction
‘There’s Virtually No Conversation In Chicago … About the Aftershocks of the Violence.’
In “An American Summer,” journalist Alex Kotlowitz tries to report on gun deaths on Chicago’s South Side with the same attention to survivors, anniversaries, and aftershocks that is paid to mass shootings.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Something Unspeakable Happened in Allende, Mexico
Seven years after a vicious drug cartel massacre, residents are still looking for answers about the fates of their loved ones.
Posted inReading List
Alternative Reality: ‘Dark Window’
Read about the inclusive beauty of Charleston’s defunct Garden and Gun Club and more, in this installment of the alt weekly reading list.
