You see, my parents were always picky about their food. They wouldn’t eat this, they wouldn’t eat that. Very choosy. Which sometimes got them in trouble. That’s why it was particularly peculiar on Thanksgiving Day that they ate the whole meal themselves. My mother does not like turkey, but she ate the thing whole… My father hates cranberry sauce, yet he satisfyingly licked the sticky remains off his fingers. They did not even tell my brother and me to come down to eat.

Summer was when their “habits” really set in. On a hot Saturday afternoon, we all decided to go to the community pool to cool off… My parents had other ideas. We arrived, and they drank all the water in the pool. Nobody could swim.

That Sunday, we went to the cathedral in town. The sermon was about gluttony. How ironic.

The next day, the weather was terrible—storms everywhere. So, my father stole the lightning from the sky and ate it whole. One day after work, my mother came home and ate the patio. I was afraid she would start on the whole house. This continued for months… They were ravenous.

Their worst episode was at our cousin’s wedding… Everyone dressed in their Sunday’s best. At the reception, guests cheered on the newlyweds while my parents made their way to every table… More importantly, they ate every plate and wiped them clean. The caterers did not have extra food to spare.

One day, we were watching television. I asked them, Why are you like this? The pool, Thanksgiving, the wedding—why did you consume everything?

They said, We are not sure.

I replied, You know you are gluttons?

They said, We have the right to do anything—but we will not be mastered by anything.

I said, If you are given to gluttony, I should put a knife to your throats.

They said, We are scared, something consumed us.

I said, What?

They said, Open us.

I said I would not.

They said, You have to see, we are not your parents.

I said I would be convicted of murder and I am too young to go to jail.

They pleaded, Please, please open us and see. Pretend we are gifts. We are afraid. Save us!

I said, Don’t be afraid (even though fear consumed me).

They started screaming, Save us!

I slit their throats. Red spilled all over the floor like a river running through a valley. As did my tears. I heard something in the other room. I saw my parents, but not in their mortal state. They were beings but not humans.

My mother smiled and looked down at the table. Thanksgiving dinner was served.

Grace Reed was born and raised outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania. She attends Towson University and plans on graduating with a degree in Mass Communication on a Public Relations and Advertising track in 2021. Her writing speaks louder than she does.

Featured image: Frank Lindecke

The photo above was taken on West North Avenue in Baltimore City—right outside of Mondawmin. I was pursuing a photo series of the artist Iandry, a 2009 MICA graduate whose art decorates the city. He was painting the “Wall of Wisdom,” a mural which consists of six portraits of historical change makers: Frederick Douglass, Matthew Henson, Fanny Coppin, Robert W. Coleman, William S. Baer, and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. I would travel into the city twice a week to document the progress of the mural—an experience that was never dull. Each visit, I would watch Iandry encourage community members to get involved in the painting process. Passersby would be given a few simple instructions, and minutes later they were a part of this beautiful masterpiece. He would receive kind words flying out of car windows, gracious thank-you’s from those walking down the street, and an overall approval from the community. I remember him saying once that art doesn’t change people, but it can inspire people to make the changes they want for themselves.

Baltimore City, often considered to be a not-so-nice place by outsiders and even some insiders, holds a lot of beauty in my eyes. My love for the city was planted my junior year of high school when I began working at a restaurant in Federal Hill. Before anyone calls me out, being exposed to this one type of neighborhood didn’t allow me to truly claim love for the city yet. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college, when I started dating someone who had spent their whole life in Baltimore City, that I began exploring it in a whole new way. Infatuation with the start of my relationship and newfound friends led me to be intoxicated with excitement every time I had a chance to go to Baltimore; suddenly Towson was of complete disinterest to me.

I began to learn and come to know more neighborhoods—Charles Village, Remington, Hampden, Fells Point… Some of which are definitely in the process of being gentrified. But, nonetheless, my love was expanding. It was then that I found myself becoming very defensive over those who only saw Baltimore as a crime-ridden, “ghetto” place. My best friend recently had a conversation with someone she graduated with. She stated that she was planning on moving to Baltimore, and his response was, “Oh, you’re moving to the ghetto!” Both of us were completely awestruck by the sheer ignorance of his statement. Media coverage of Baltimore does an unjust job at countering the bad with the good—I suppose that goes for everything though. Just because windows are boarded up and certain places have a higher volume of crime does not deem them ugly. Crime by some does not account for all. Inner city Baltimore has been put through the ringer. For those of you who have your doubts about the beauty of this city, please examine the systemic oppression that has grasped many parts of the community so tightly. We are all very different from one another but that does not mean we are not all beautiful. The good that people like Iandry are doing is going unnoticed by those people who are so quick to deem Baltimore a bad place. During my time photographing him, I also photographed another artist named Gaia. To me, they are physical proof of Baltimore City being beautiful. They turn walls into art while also seeing the beauty that already exists. The location of the “Wall of Wisdom” mural wouldn’t be considered the safest place for me to be venturing by myself. My boyfriend, who once lived there, always left me with a “be safe” every time I went. I think it is experiences like this that help me better understand communities that differ from my own, and without them, I too would be ignorant.

Natalie Jeffery is a twenty-two-year-old food enthusiast who thrives by using words and photographs to uncover the world in front of her. With women’s issues at the forefront of her interests, she would like to use such creative devices to promote gender equality.

I recently had the chance to ask Kyle a few questions about his craft.
 
Who inspires you?
 
Inspirations change over time–not only the writers themselves but the media and genres you consume. So I’d say—over the most recent ten year period—Alan Moore (author of the Watchmen comic series), Miyamoto Musashi (legendary swordsman and author of The Book of Five Rings), poets Nikky Finney and Solmaz Sharif, emcees Kendrick Lamar and Phonte Coleman, bands Idles and The Dø.

I’ve noticed that in many of your poems you use humor to address serious issues. What inspires that approach?
 
I never think of myself as properly “funny”. (I fear that consciously being confident about that actually inhibits the work it takes to actually be funny.) But I think poems—any piece of art really—calls you to be the artist you need to be to create that poem. Sometimes there is readily available irony in a serious matter, and that poem may call for you to be funny because, let’s be honest, people don’t come to poems to learn morality or to learn how to become aware of their own political blind spots. But poems can do that to you when you are willing to internalize them for a different reason—be that the humor or be that the language or the form. I always like to remind myself and others that “art” is “artifice”—there is something consciously fabricated or contrived about it. We know where reality is, and most people don’t walk in that direction. Art is a portal to a different engagement with reality. So you can travel through a humorous poem about something dire and come out on the other side more willing to see and walk towards the darker human realities. Maybe.
 
Do you think that being based in D.C. influenced the political nature of your most recent book of poems, Honest Engine?
 
I don’t believe in that political / personal dichotomy. Almost everything we do is steeped in our battles for equality and representation (or for some maintaining their advantage in terms of privilege and power). If anything—contemporary D.C. being such a superficially political city (as far as party politics are concerned)—I think living in D.C. helps sharpen my perspective on what is sincerely concerned with the lives or fates of people and what is a performance of concern or outrage. D.C. is full of (well-paid) political performers. I never want to be that. I want to be someone living his way into writing sincerely about how real individual human lives are impacted by the policies of our national and global leadership.

I’ve heard that you’re working on your next book of poems. Which themes are prevalent in that book/what can readers expect?

The new book, Anagnorisis, is an attempt to speak frankly to the politically dominant American audiences about how it feels to be who I am at this moment and how it felt to have so much disdain for my particular humanity (urban, blk, male) collectively expressed by the electorate’s support of the current president. I always assumed modern Americans would not go that far to express hatred, fear, and resentment. But since they did in electing (or allowing the election of) this president, then I need to be honest about the lived ramifications that event has had for me and other vulnerable populations I am close to. In different ways, many of the poems express this sentiment: I have lost faith in you and this is why. If that faith is ever to be restored, I will need a good reason. I will need to see effort.

What do you think being a successful writer entails?
 
Success—you have to think about that professionally and artistically. Professionally, it will be different for everyone depending on which bourgeoisie goals you do or do not seek to attain as a “professional.” Some people need to win certain awards and fellowships or publish in certain venues. Others maybe just want a book with their name on it. You set—and adjust—your own professional goals over time. The artistic goals are met—or failed—one work at a time. I’d say a successful poet continues to find ways to challenge themselves while maintaining a healthy relationship to the process of making art. (Self-destructive art making practices aren’t “successful” to me.) It’s really a challenge against the self. You are the only one who knows the scope and depth of your intentions, and therefore, I’d say, you are the only person who can judge your artistic success and hold yourself accountable to those standards.

 
For more on Kyle Dargan, visit his website, or buy his newest book, Agnorisis.

Charlotte Smith is a writer and artist living in Baltimore, Maryland. She is currently a student at Towson University, where she majors in Mass Communication and minors in Creative Writing. Charlotte hopes to use art in many forms to make sense of the world, particularly the social issues that she sees affecting herself and others in daily life. She is particularly passionate about the rights of women and minorities, and likes to work with publications that are committed to sharing their stories. More of her work can be found online at Lithium Magazine, where she is a staff writer.

The following interview is with Andi McIver, the author of “Ubuntu,” which will appear in our next issue. “Ubuntu” is an amazing nonfiction essay about the life of McIver as she grows up in South Africa, a place still haunted with the remnants of Apartheid, having only just institutionally ended in the early 90s. “Ubuntu” explores how a young girl comes to terms with her skin color and identity in relation to the racial division she was born into. The interview was conducted via email by Kennidi Green, one of Grub Street’s nonfiction editors.

How did you first hear about Grub Street?

I work at the Writing Center at Towson University, and I often saw Grub Street staff meeting in the office.

What made you start writing nonfiction?

I’ve always loved stories and learning about people’s lives. I’ve wanted to write a nonfiction piece for years. To be honest, though, I probably wouldn’t have written “Ubuntu” had I not taken a nonfiction writing course with Professor Vanasco. 

As a nonfiction writer myself, I can sometimes find it difficult to write about something that is both interesting and engaging. Have you ever felt this way personally? Do you have any advice on this issue?

I actually haven’t struggled with this much, fortunately enough. I think it’s because I write about stuff I genuinely care about, so it’s easier for people to engage with something the author is obviously invested in. I really believe people will always respond to an author who writes about something she cares about in an authentic and honest way.

From my personal experience, people seem to have a pretty good understanding of what fiction writing is. However, the general understanding of what nonfiction writing is seems to be a lot less clear. How do you personally define nonfiction writing?

To me, it’s writing based mostly on fact. While I think it is admissible to maybe neaten up dialogue, changing data moves a piece from nonfiction to fiction.

I absolutely love all the facts you include in your piece. Did you have to do a lot of research while creating “Ubuntu”?

Thank you! I didn’t actually have to do a ton because I grew up surrounded by South Africa’s history. The research I did was more to find a credible source to include in my work.

“Ubuntu” is an amazing piece that is eloquently written. I can’t help but wonder, have you ever been published before?

Thank you so much (again)! I’ve never been published for creative writing, but I have previously been published for a research paper I did about social media’s impact in Yemen during the Arab Spring Uprising. 

In the section titled “Anger,” you describe the strong emotions you feel in relation to the world around you. At the end of the section, you write that this anger now propels you forward. Can you elaborate on that a little? How does your anger now move you forward? You also mention that your anger is different now than how it was previously. How so?

What I’m referring to is an intolerance of racism (and injustice in general) – and even more than beyond simple intolerance, this anger is a reaction that says, “What’s happening isn’t just unpleasant and unfair, we cannot allow it to continue for another second.” Many people I know find social injustice upsetting or unpleasant, but few of them let it affect them enough to actually be compelled into doing something to right said wrong. This is what I mean when I say it propels me forward: when something disturbs me to the point of me feeling this anger, it gives me purpose to make a positive difference to whatever issue this may be. 

There was a point when I felt so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of inequality in South Africa (and globally, but that’s really an entirely different story altogether) that I just couldn’t find the strength or energy to begin to try make a difference as I felt helpless to even make a dent. Now I feel as though I have the knowledge to know how to actually do something constructive about working toward a more just South Africa.

Timothy Taranto is the author of Ars Botanica, a gorgeous memoir exploring—in the form of letters to his unborn child—the intimate details of self-image, love, and loss through the realities of Alopecia, an ending relationship, and an abortion. Writer Karen Russell called it “a gorgeous hybrid” and “one of the most wrenching and honest accounts of falling in and out of love, of moving through a season of grief” that she has ever read. Grub Street’s staff read it last year in a creative nonfiction class, and so when discussion arose about a judge for our high school contest, Taranto’s name rushed forward from our collective unconscious. He Skyped with our class, and a year later we find ourselves still saying, “It’s like what Tim said….” His work has appeared in Harper’s, The Iowa Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Paris Review Daily, The Rumpus, and now Grub Street (he generously gave us an original illustration of Ursula K. Le Guin as a bean pod mutant). He corresponded with Macy Meyer, one of our nonfiction editors, by email.

When did you start writing?

I grew up painting and printmaking. Both of my parents are artists, and my father ran a print studio when I was kid, so my brother and I were always drawing on his light table, shooting our own screens. My mother is a representational painter, and she’d set up still lifes for us in the dining room. I was very happy kid, creatively speaking. It seemed natural to pursue visual arts, so I enrolled at Cornell University to study painting. As much as I loved my studio art classes at Cornell, I also loved all the courses I took that were in other departments: courses in the classics and archaeology, art history and natural sciences. I even took fly fishing! Surprisingly I didn’t take a single creative writing class that whole time. My interests outside of the studio led me to a career as a science teacher. I taught earth science and biology for several years in New York City at a private elementary school. I loved it. I loved my students and my co-teachers. But I wasn’t making art and there was something inside me that felt unsatisfied. So in my late-twenties, when I started writing essays and short stories, I started to feel a sort of personal and creative joy I had not known since childhood. I would go to open-mic sessions around the city and read my writing aloud. It was mortifying, but I received really enthusiastic receptions most places, and that encouraged me to keep at it. The first story I wrote was about fishing for bluefish. Not knowing much about anything in the literary world, I went to my favorite bookstore and looked at the lit mags and picked the two I liked best: Saint Ann’s Review and The New Yorker. I submitted to both and while The New Yorker never wrote back (surprise) the Saint Ann’s Review agreed to publish me! Still not knowing much about writing, I googled “creative writing MFA” and from there learned about the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I sent a manuscript of four more fishing stories and sixty dollars to Iowa and was admitted. I have been very lucky and very blessed as an artist.

Do you think Ars Botanica is a concrete example of your style or voice? Did your voice change during the writing process? Do you think your voice is different now?

More and more, I tend to think of voice and style as being fluid and metamorphic as opposed concrete and fixed, career-wise. I feel that Ars Botanica was a faithful representation of my style and voice during a particular turbulent emotional epoch in my life. A mentor of mine explained once how temporality and proximity do a lot to inform voice and tone in a piece of writing. To write about something from the distant past, the tone may likely be melancholic or elegiac, but to write from within the eye of the storm, to write about events as they are unfolding around you, that can capture an energy or urgency that time could no doubt work to erase. With Ars Botanica I was very close to the blast radius of the events that I was writing about. I was writing to discover how I myself would make it through. When the act of writing is a journey of discovery for the writer, I feel the reader can more readily share in that experience as well. To answer your second and third questions, I guess I feel that voice may vacillate across the landscape of an artwork, from the first page to the final sentence, but more often those transformations occur over the editing process. A good editor nurtures the work as it evolves toward a coherent aesthetic vision, and usually that means the work settles upon its true and cogent voice. My voice is still mine, but it is no doubt different now. Why? Because the act of creating changes you. Writing Ars Botanica changed me and as a result transformed my voice a little. I could not have written my second book had I not written my first.

Was the editing process what you were expecting? Last year, when you spoke to our lit mag advisor’s nonfiction class, you said, “You can only see sixty percent of your writing. You can’t write alone.” How did you discover that? Did that change your writing process?

Totally. I believe you need good friends who are good readers of your work, as well as dedicated editors to help you hone your art into its fullest form. I mostly discovered this from failure, hubris. My friend Kate recently encouraged me to write an epilogue to my novel. I knew as soon as I read her suggestion that it was the right one. Good literary advice doesn’t so much feel like an epiphany, like a solution lobbed out of left field, than it does feel like a remembered truth. You know it when you see it, in your heart and gut more than in your brain. I sat down that night and wrote the epilogue that I knew my book deserved. As soon as Kate read it, she said, “There it is.”

Was it hard to find the right level of intimacy to share with your readers in Ars Botanica? Did you have an audience in mind? Did you ever want to change the truth? Did you set out wanting to include your Alopecia, the detailed relationship, and the abortion, or did those events find you along the way?

The events found me along the way, for sure. But I don’t know if I wanted to change the truth so much as I wanted to conceal it. Initially, I tried to pass the manuscript off as fiction. In no way did I set out to write about the abortion, the intimate details of my relationship, or the painful and private history of my body. But all of those events found their way onto the page because the person I was writing for at the outset was myself. I may have said this before in one way or another, but the art I needed at that time in my life had not yet been written, so I had to write it myself. The fact that this book has proved meaningful to so many others along the way makes me believe that there was, amid all those personal details, some true and universal understanding of what it means to love and to lose.

How did you start writing Ars Botanica? (Kind of a broad question, I know.) Was there one quote that popped into your head and started the whole thing? Did you start with the letters to Catalpa? A certain scene or exchange of dialogue?

I honestly don’t remember. I know the bike crash was the first narrative scene I wrote. I was trying to organize and categorize my emotions in writing as a way to cope long before I knew it was a book. I wrote letters to Catalpa but that was something private and almost shameful. It was months before the two collided and became one project. The other lines, the drawings and the poems I was making during that time, they were brought in later. And these decisions came about as a result of having good readers and good editors. I know where my second book began though. I was reading a Paris Review interview with the legendary novelist and editor William Maxwell, and he said the genesis of his book So Long See You Tomorrow came from a childhood memory that still made him shudder. It was the memory of not giving comfort to a classmate who had also lost a parent. I asked myself what events from my past still haunted me. There was a memory of being an altar server in the 90s and how one of our parishioners was dying of AIDS. Thinking of it made me cry.

How much hindsight perspective did you allow to influence the voice of the narrator and the flow of the book? Did you want a more reflective style or in the moment?

Good question. I feel that the novella sections, the more traditional first-person chapters, are for sure more reflective. The letters seemed to have a greater deal of immediacy though. Maybe this is a good example of what I was hinting towards earlier, how a piece of art may possess multiple tonal shifts and occupy different vocal registers. 

What are you reading?

I just started a novel by Chia-Chia Lin, The Unpassing. She was a classmate at Iowa, and I loved her short stories and so far the novel is fabulous. As a matter of fact, I not so long ago read your professor’s second book, twice, and have been raving about it to everyone who’ll listen. Also, Jim Harrison’s collected poems from Copper Canyon, The Shape of the Journey.

Can you share a little about what you’re working on now?

I just finished my first novel, it’s called Mammoth. Like Ars Botanica, it gave me an artistic space to meditate upon certain poignant and restless emotions. I’ve spent a lifetime grappling with obesity and struggling with negative body-image issues, eating disorders. There isn’t a lot of conversation occurring for men who are carrying these burdens though, so this book became that for me, an artistic space to at least start that conversation. As a result, I was able to create a narrator who is not only sharing those struggles, but living the life I never did, the life of a visual artist and painter. This book has been really healing for me. I’m really excited to see it in print.

The sketch of the flower (on this page) first appeared in Ars Botanica.

Like many other magazines in today’s surplus, The Sienese Shredder was destined for a short life. During its four years of operation, it may not have made a household name out of itself, but it managed to publish work from influential writers, such as John Ashbery, and artists, such as Willem de Kooning. I was initially drawn to this magazine based on the description of content. It claimed to publish not only art and literature, but also music by including CDs with each issue. The Sienese Shredder seemed to have the same ambitions every magazine is born from: the idea that it was capable of filing a gap in the world’s content.

In 2006, Brice Brown and Trevor Winkfield started the NYC-based magazine. There is little information on the magazine’s manifesto. Its website reads simply, “Each issue brings together poetry, critical writing, visual arts, unpublished rarities, oddball ephemera and other culturally significant material in a way that is exciting, contemporary and fresh.” Although I admire what the magazine set out to do, the website lacked luster even as a piece frozen in 2010’s aesthetic. Once the magazine started going under, the editors began an archival project making almost every issue available online. The website organizes material by artist name instead of by genre. There is something interesting about the blind browsing it imposes on the reader, but once a name is clicked on, multiple pieces appear from the initial list. It helped me find work from many people I may not have clicked on; however, this strategy also made me lose who I began with and what first interested me.

I felt as though I focused more on the art displayed than the words published. The art works had a Japanese vintage-esque flavor about them, and I could imagine how beautiful they would be in person. However, this was the extent of my admiration. It became very evident to me that the magazine itself was too eclectic and maybe even too Avant-garde for my taste. There were paintings of dog fights and toilet paper rolls alongside poems with experimental syntax that I had never seen before. As Brown and Winkfield’s expertise stem from art instead of creative writing, it is very possible that I, someone with no artistic training, just do not “get it.”

It is a magazine I might have never picked up, but I can imagine what it may have turned into if it was printing in 2018 instead of 2010. It may have found a better home among the postmodern readers today. There is no doubt The Sienese Shredder had a vision for itself and the place it would occupy in the literary world, but it is possible people were not ready for its niche. It is a testament to the power of audience. The magazine had important contributors within the pages, but as it was forced to compete on the streets of New York as so many other magazines must, it may have been overshadowed.

I am intrigued by the premise of this magazine, and I hope the editors continue the archive up to the final issue and display the work for as long as they are able. If the internet really is forever, then I hope it is used as free real estate to keep the work alive forever too.

Normal’s Book & Records – Waverly

This quirky bookstore in Northern Baltimore is a bookworm’s dream, hosting dim nooks of floor to ceiling books, an impressive collection of vinyl records, and, most notably, a mouse pad with a blown up photo of Nicolas Cage’s face sitting on a shelf next to the register. Normal’s is one of the only places in the city that back stocks periodicals, so you can stock up on old issues of lit and art mags after browsing the adjacent local artists and writers section.

Atomic Books – Hampden

On Falls Road, just off of the charming 36th street that constitutes the main drag of Hampden, lies Atomic Books. This local favorite stocks new books and cultural tchotchkes alongside an extensive comic and zine collection. Crack a fresh spine and enjoy a cup of coffee at the cafe through the back.

The Ivy Bookstore – Mt. Washington

This book store does a lot to contribute to Baltimore’s literary culture, hosting frequent readings from authors and acting as a collaborator with Artifact Coffee to curate Bird in Hand, another entry on this list. The Ivy’s pretty storefront promises what’s delivered inside: a comfortable browsing experience, a vast array of titles, and friendly staff to guide you to the right book.

The Book Escape – Fed Hill

The Book Escape has all the nooks and crannies necessary for book hunting and the low prices on used titles to make the search feel like a victory. Some of my favorite tomes from my personal collection found their way into my hands from the shelves of this store. I’ve spent many Saturday afternoons lounging in an armchair tucked away in a corner of The Book Escape, flipping yellowed pages and reading handwritten inscriptions (“with love”) on inside covers.

Bird in Hand – Charles Village

This bookstore and cafe is settled right next to the bustling area of Johns Hopkins’ University, an impressive college with a busy literary scene. This small shop is the perfect place to scrawl in a Moleskine or tap away at a Macbook to the scent of roasted coffee and the tinkling sound of spoon against ceramic, and it hosts an impressive lineup of writers reading from their published works.  

Bluebird – Hampden

This swanky bar just off of Hampden’s 36th street serves fancy (and delicious) cocktails outlined in “chapters” on their menu. Stacked books and reading lamps line the long tables, and the ambience plus the liquor equals a reading room you won’t want to leave. Check it out on Sunday or Monday for all day happy hour.

The Book Thing – Waverly

A weekend wonder that seems too good to be true, Baltimore’s generous The Book Thing is a bookstore that’s only open two days a week – and all the books are free. Nestled right behind Normal’s Book & Records, The Book Thing offers free used titles to anyone who stops in, as long as they get there between 9 and 5 on Saturday or Sunday.

Barnes and Noble – Inner Harbor

No, this isn’t a cool indie bookstore with readings or local titles, but the book giant’s location on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor boasts beautiful architecture, two floors of browsing, and a Starbucks upstairs with outdoor seating and views of the harbor below.

A small independent bookstore opened in the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore in March of 2018. Greedy Reads sits at the corner of Aliceanna and Ann Street, two blocks from the water. Narrow red and blue stained glass windows run the two exterior walls and cast shadows across the beaten hardwood floor. Wide windows are filled with books facing the street, and a wrought-iron gate swings wide to welcome you inside. 

The owner and sole operator, Julia Fleischaker, is a Maryland native. After working in New York City in the publishing industry for 20 years, she wanted to come home. But it wasn’t until she walked past the space on Aliceanna Street that she knew she was going to open a bookstore. It was the perfect space. As Fleischaker points out, “the beautifully weathered floors, the stunning stained glass, the huge windows…sometimes I stop and look around and still can’t believe I landed in such an amazing space.”

The space is spectacular. Walking in feels like arriving at a picnic with friends you didn’t know you had; so many stories that you want to catch up on, so many voices you need to hear. It’s warm, welcoming, and cozy. Somehow it’s both small and expansive. The floor is weathered, worn but not broken, giving you the delightful feeling of all those who must have walked here before you – a sense of community and shared experience. 

A table by the door is stacked with paperbacks. A small A-frame bookshelf houses a colorful collection of feminist and children’s books. An aisle is formed by two tables and the benches that fit neatly beside them. There, the larger books are displayed, the ones that will eventually find their way to coffee tables, sparking conversations. One wall is lined with built-in bookshelves housing fiction, memoirs, cookbooks, signed books, comics, and a sorted offering of others. The other wall has children’s books and a small selection of literary-related gifts. 

Large windows let in the light and offer a view of the neighborhood. It’s an ideal escape from the snow or the rain. It’s a place to browse books, become taken in by their worlds, and forget about whatever the weather is outside. And if you visit on the right day, a labrador-greyhound mix may just come over to greet you. That would be Audie, the friendly and lovable store dog who eagerly accepts any affection she’s offered.

The bookstore is personal; it has a voice and a personality. The selection of books is not determined by a computer but by Fleischaker and the recommendations of the community. It’s hands-on, heartfelt, and purposeful. As she says, “It’s my hope that anyone who lives in or around Baltimore can come into the store and find a welcoming environment and a book that speaks to them.” She makes a point to offer a diverse collection, highlighting authors of color and female writers. 

It’s a small store, but enough books are there for you to find, on each trip, at least one new one that you didn’t know you wanted to read. Last year’s bestseller was Michelle Obama’s Becoming, and other top reads included Paul Beatty’s The Sellout and Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Handwritten “Why I’m Greedy About This Book” tags offer recommendations and give a sense of who the community is and what they’re reading. 

Fleischaker loves the books, but she also loves the community she gets to share that passion with: “I’ve gotten to know so many of my customers, and honestly, most days it feels like friends just dropping in to visit.”

It’s a place of beauty: the words in the books, the people who frequent the shop, the light that filters through the stained glass windows and falls upon the paperbacks. Stop by to give Audie some love, join the book club or hear an author talk, and find the next book you’re greedy to read.

Honesty? What does it mean? More importantly, what does it feel like? To me, it feels like Little Fiction and Big Truths. 

The moment I read the journal’s title, I felt inclined to click. Because to me, and I’m sure to many other young writers and editors, there is a constant search for truth, for individuality, and for honesty. And while those qualities may seem redundant, I don’t believe they are. To me, truth has never meant honesty. Truth feels like circumstance, and honesty feels like a state of mind–a raw emotion of that circumstance.

Little Fiction and Big Truths makes the truth feel honest.

Published the first Wednesday of every month, the stories and essays on the journal’s website are all unique and tailored perfectly. Tailored not for their audiences, but for the authors. Isn’t that what’s supposed to be important to an author? We write for ourselves: a concept that a lot of us struggle with while composing our stories into text.

Emily O’Neill’s “Do Nothing Unless It Feeds You” was the first piece that I read in Little Fiction and Big Truths. This essay explores Emily’s struggles with an eating disorder. “For me, food is a kind of anxiety,” Emily writes. “There is no table where I can sit without being afraid of what might happen. I talk too much when I go out for dinner, a kind of avoidance. I order more than I can take, a kind of insurance. It will be okay to stop before the plate is empty. It’s not a sign of relapse to not finish every bite. No one will make me eat the mistake, reheated, for breakfast. I will not cry.” As someone who has also suffered from the (seemingly) endless self-loathing and self-harm connected to this highly addictive disease, I appreciated how vulnerable she was on the page. Emily was a ballerina, Emily wanted to be loved, Emily wanted help and didn’t know how to ask for it. Emily was me. 

A common misconception about eating disorders: we do it because we think we’re fat. Maybe that’s the truth most of the time, but it sure as hell isn’t the honest answer. We do it because we hurt. We do it because we are too afraid to take the next step in self harm, and we believe everyone prefers the skinny girl over the less-invisible forms of self-harm, ones that will eventually line the curves of the hidden portion of our thighs. We don’t all do it because we’re fat or feel fat. We do it because we’re really fucking sad and nobody noticed. “But even if you couldn’t see the sick,” Emily writes, “it was everywhere, migraines needling my eye sockets.” Her pain wasn’t just for print. It was real.

Writing about our painful experiences shouldn’t necessarily be painful, and reading about painful experiences shouldn’t have to be painful either. It should, or could, be cathartic and beautiful, like our humanity and desire to tell the story. That’s something I truly believe Little Fiction and Big Truths understands and portrays through its selection of works. Each piece holds its own home as an icon on your screen as you scroll down the “collections” tab. A little picture or clip art is attached to the piece, as a way to your draw attention to the stories and essays.  To feel even closer to the authors, you can access some of their writing playlists, as well as the authors’ descriptions of how the songs helped. The site links to the songs on Spotify. The opportunity to listen to the songs, while reading the stories, helped me feel closer to the author and the story. This, to me, keeps the writing process honest. I hate to admit my naiveté, and possible ignorance to the craft, but I always imagined that authors sat down at their computer one day and wrote a masterpiece—probably with coffee in hand and their cat weaving in between their legs. Little Fiction and Big Truths brought the process to life, and I was not only closer to learning the story of the author, but a step closer to understanding the reality of the literary world—honest and welcoming.

Refreshing.

Little Fiction and Big Truths is one of the few literary magazines where I can feel the soul and passion behind the words on the screen. The site isn’t too flashy, because it doesn’t need to be— it doesn’t change the beautiful stories that are being told through their online platform. Art should never be forced. Stories shouldn’t be told because they will get the most clicks, views, or shares, but because the story needs to be told. And I don’t mean the version that our shame has been edited out of, but the real story, the honest story. The story that makes us cry on our keyboard as we type the words, feeling each one over and over again. The best stories break hearts, and, ironically, they sometimes mend them too. Thank you, Little Fiction and Big Truth: for the little fiction, and the big truths.

I knew that I needed to read Fence from the moment that I saw its bright pink cover. I thought it was eccentric and intriguing, and that is exactly what the Spring/Winter 2015 issue of Fence is, from cover to cover.  The front cover features a poem called “Front and Pearl” in all white text. The poem’s surreal lines capture Fence‘s experimental feel. One of the stanza’s reads: “She was the lemon target of reality. / Here, I’ll do the butcher. / Yes, the sun has officially set / until tomorrow. / The cathedral had an unfinished look to it.” An “unfinished look to it” is how I’d describe my favorite poetry. It’s also how I’d describe a lot of the poetry in Fence.

Fence publishes biannually, and its mission is “to maintain a dedicated venue for writing and art that bears the clear variant mark of the individual’s response to their context; and to make that venue accessible to as many, and as widely, as possible so that this work can reach others, that they may be fully aware of how much is possible in writing and art.”

This volume of Fence gives the reader a bit of everything. The table of contents is divided into “poetry,” “fiction,” and “other.” The poetry ranges from short, more-traditional love poems (“Because an Imitation is Almost as Good as the Real Thing” by Charles Olson) to longer prose poetry (“Multiply” by Wendy S. Walters) to some of the most experimental poetry that I have ever encountered (Andrea Actis’s “C-Span Lean Cuisine” and Ben Doller’s “Lancanian Inc.”). One of the fiction pieces that stood out to me was Kristen Gleason’s “Armand.”  I also enjoyed pieces in the “other” section, such as Julie Carr’s “Real Life: An Installation” and Laylage Courie’s “Lost Films of Theda Bara.” Carr’s piece is just that, a narrated art installation, and Courie’s is a narration of scenes from the author’s favorite Theda Bara films. And the poem on the back cover, “Rambling Statement,” has two of my favorite lines of poetry: “He suffered a long time ago, / and he will love you forever.”

The front and back covers proved to be a bold and memorable introduction and conclusion, respectively, to a magazine that challenges the reader to embrace new and emerging kinds of poetry. Fence‘s poetry is how I like poetry to be: beautiful and raw.

Some of my favorites from Volume 30:

“A Blowjob Titled “Givenchy,”‘ Lara Mimosa Montes

“Good Luck,” Alen Hamza

“Field Notes,” Rick Snyder

“My Penis Has Given You Up,” Drew Kalbach

“Inverse Heaven Division One,” Ish Klein

“Astrophysical Mass,” Rick Moody