I sit in the stall waiting for the mother to finish diapering her daughter. The angry comments that I had braced for as I entered the restroom and fast walked into the first available stall play in my head.
Hey! This is the ladies room!
Pervert!
Can’t you read!
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Erasure “I must have turned around, or jumped back or something, and then you dropped the knife and the meat was on the floor and you just started saying ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ over and over again, and you huddled in the corner and sort of held your head and rocked and kept saying ‘I’m … Continue reading
Our non fiction editor for November and December is Elissa Washuta. Elissa is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a writer of personal essays and memoir. She is the author of two books, Starvation Mode and My Body Is a Book of Rules, named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Her work has appeared in … Continue reading
Reading nonfiction for September and is Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, who also has an essay in The James Franco Review Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo was the 2013 Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange poetry winner and a 2015 writer-in-residence at Ragdale Foundation. She has work published in Acentos Review, The American Poetry Review, CALYX, Los Angeles Review, Lumen Magazine, … Continue reading
I think of safe places and a single weighted word forms in my mind: home. Continue reading
On Wednesday issue 4 comes to a finale with an essay by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo. Below are thoughts by editor Courtney Kersten, on why she selected Xochitl’s essay. This past spring, I had the good fortune to take a workshop with the generous, spirited, and wise writer Allison Hawthorne Deming during her time as a … Continue reading
Quickly, there are rides, all with men. It never takes more than a couple of minutes for someone to stop and I am zipping through Washington, then Oregon. One man picks me up in northern California. He’s just a few years older than me. There are empty soda cans rolling around the floor of his black Camaro. Maybe he will fall in love with me. Maybe he has a life I could join. Continue reading
He always insisted that barbeque was meant to be eaten with one’s hands—anything more and you were deemed a sham, just another half-assed pretender at life. Sweet Baby Ray’s served as blood while I was taught to pop bones from sockets, and like a fledgling under the wing of a hawk, I tore at things once living beneath my father’s cool shadow. Continue reading
I hope that spaces like this let us charge into the uncertainty of writing itself and truly essay without fear of snickering (both internal and external) about being too young or too old or too whatever to write what you want to write. Continue reading
We held Molotov Cocktail Nights for only three consecutive Fridays. We were all somewhere around eighteen give or take. On the first, Chris spray-painted a concrete bridge pylon with the black outline of a Christmas tree. He was always drawing Christmas trees. He swiped his favorite number in the center: 1225. The paint dribbled. Continue reading
The James Franco Review 