Category: WTP spotlight: nonfiction

From WTP Vol. VI #9 The Ban By Dean Kostos Excerpted from The Boy Who Listened to Paintings, a forthcoming memoir Home was 413 Wayne Drive. My mother said the four stood for our family, but the thirteen was unlucky. Our clapboard house was one among many on a curving street.  In the summer, I’d hear the…

From WTP Vol. VI #6 Otre Vez By Dian Parker There is only one road that runs the full length of the Baja peninsula in Mexico. It’s never more than two lanes wide and it’s an obstacle course of corduroy ridges and potholes. Dangerous if you’re riding a motorcycle. Summer, Baja, Highway 1 and motorcycles definitely…

From WTP Vol. V #9 Slip-Sliding Away By Cynthia Close It’s three o’clock and the low, late-winter-afternoon sun streams across my desk. I pick up the phone and dial. It’s the best time to reach Mom in her room, resting in her recliner, after lunch but before dinner. This had been a particularly bad week.…

From WTP Vol. V #9 A Photograph of My Father Fishing By Paul Corrigan My father is sprawled on the ground squeezing out his dripping socks after a day of fishing. His back rests against a cedar tree as he looks away from the camera down at his feet. He wears a green felt hat,…

From WTP Vol. V #8 Shake Me Up, Judy By Joan Frank The first thing I do these days, when planning travel, is to want not to go. Mortal risk, hindrance. Bad idea. I’m not proud of this unpretty, animal panic, this dumb shuttered obstinacy like a dog’s. There are plenty of reasons for it.…

From WTP Vol. V #8 The Nut File By John Skoyles When I was in college, I worked for the Associated Press at 50 Rockefeller Center in New York City. I sorted mail, typed, and filed documents. One day, I found a fat manila folder labeled, “Nut File.” A reporter told me it was a…

From WTP Vol. V #5 Columbia Elegy By J.D. Scrimgeour A few years ago I took my two sons to look at Columbia University, where I’d been a student some thirty years ago. We went into the mathematics building, where my years at Columbia had begun. I had thought that I’d major in math until…

From WTP Vol. V #2 Too Young for World War II By Stephen Davenport My brothers and I were too young for World War II, but nevertheless, it seemed very close to us. Our next-door neighbors in Riverside, Connecticut, on Long Island Sound were British. They hosted fighter pilots the Royal Air Force sent across…

From WTP Vol. V #2 On Voice By DeWitt Henry I’d never seen or imagined vocal cords.  Heard about them, of course—the voice box, the larynx. The word “cords” suggests string instruments, where a finger pluck or felt hammer causes vibrations at different frequencies, high notes, middle, and low. But here I’m about to have…

From WTP Vol. V #1 Tissue: A Scar Story By Erin Wood I layer my daughter’s skin over my skin like translucent sheets of tissue paper, her scar story over my scar story. I hold the layers up against the light. Behind them, shadows move. [gap height=”10″] ~ [gap height=”10″] I think of her skin.…