TCR Talks with Hazel Kight Witham, author of The Truth about Secrets

By Jesenia Chavez In her debut book, Hazel Kight Witham delves into middle school with a memoir in verse. She zeroes in on a fateful day where a young Witham reckons with her own fear and shame at her classmates discovering she has two moms.  She loves her moms, Judie and Sharon, but middle school is an unfriendly place for anyone whose family does not fit into a heteronormative paradigm. Middle school, with all the awkwardness and intensity of pre-adolescence, comes to life on the pages through beautifully crafted poems with vivid details. Through notes interspersed throughout the book, Witham…

The Front Yard by Keally L. Cieslik

This year, the front yard is a garden gone wild. An unruly thing. A bobbing field of bitter arugula. The herbage is higher than my waist. The sunflowers are already taller than me, and the bushy hop vine reached the top of its pole weeks ago. The intersection, an offset, four-way stop, is surrounded on three corners by mature trees: maple, birch, a giant conifer. Their leaves flutter in the breeze. When I look out at the whole scene and let my eyes soften, it becomes a placid green blur. I love the yard untamed. The plum tree, still young,…

What Does it Mean to Be Hungry by Summer Hammond

rejection             She is forty and has no right to apply to Columbia.              She doesn’t have the youth, the money, the looks, the prestige, the background, the career, the sidewalks, the parents, the network, the status, the sidewalks, the youth, the smarts, the money, the money, the money,             Yet, there she is, on a Saturday afternoon, after a full week teaching ninth grade reading, typing away her weekends on a fruitless, hopeless, vain and stupid vision.              An…

Things I Learned from Running on the Treadmill at the Gym While Watching Cable Television by Jeanette Tran

The first thing I learn from running on the treadmill at the gym while watching cable television is that you should not be at the gym watching cable television on a Friday night. There is no wait for a treadmill, but there is also nothing entertaining on, even if your idea of entertaining is watching Jon Taffer scold small business owners on AMC’s Bar Rescue, or Ree Drummond prepare Chicken Enchilasagna for her husband, Ladd, on Food Network’s The Pioneer Woman. From the hours of 6–9 p.m., your best option is likely HGTV’s My Lottery Dream Home, which, despite the…

Slanting

by Heather Browne

I was eight before I knew she was crazy. Until then, I thought maybe it was me. Maybe I was confused or maybe not all that bright, not brilliant like her. I was eight before I understood that talking to trees, dogs, the coat hanging in her closet, dancing with imaginary fairies that only she could see, was something other than spectacularly magical. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes between creativity, genius, and mere insanity, especially when you are too young to even know how to slant your pen.

Book Review: Notes on a Silencing

Lacy Crawford’s memoir Notes on a Silencing speaks to the ways gender, privilege, and power silenced Crawford twenty-five years ago. When Crawford was fifteen years old, she was lured to a boys’ dormitory one night, pulled from beneath the night shadows, and sexually assaulted.

Book Review: Stray

On the one hand, Stephanie Danler lives in the “Writer House” of our dreams: a small cottage hidden away in Laurel Canyon, with a yard for dinner parties and a mythic history that may or may not involve Fleetwood Mac.