Vanessa Mártir, our nonfiction editor for February and March, is a NYC based writer, educator and mama. She is currently completing her memoir, Relentless, and chronicles her journey in her blog: vanessamartir.wordpress.com. A five-time VONA/Voices fellow, Vanessa now serves as the organization’s Workshop Director and the newsletter editor. Her essays have appeared in The Butter, … Continue reading
Well, when you reach your twenties, an invention called the Internet will come along. It’s complicated, but it’s sort of a combination of the library, TV, and Atari. Continue reading
It’s eight o’clock, and my dad’s still not home from work. Mom is making one phone call after another to the bars around town. I am on the sofa working on my Romeo and Juliet book report. Unlike most people, I like the fact that there is not a happy ending. Continue reading
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!
Continue reading
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
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
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
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
In the acute care area, gurneys line the walls, small curtains opening up to people triaged out of their street clothes into cotton gowns and tiny beds. A man yells about razor blades in his veins, begs for medication for withdrawals. Another sits upright, the right side of his skull caved in and drooping into his shoulder like a chocolate bunny left to melt in the sun. Continue reading
Our nonfiction editor for March/April is Ashley Ford, who does cool things at the Harnisch Foundation during the day. She’s a former staff writer at BuzzFeed.Com and a current serious yacht rock enthusiast. She’s also working on writing a book (or two), and co-editing the anthology Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture. Born and raised in Indiana, … Continue reading
The James Franco Review 