Creative Nonfiction

1 item, up to 5,000 words. We lean toward the swift/compact.

Lyric(-al) and narrative(-ish) essay, form-blending & genre-bending, idea collisions, personal-ized history/journalism and memoir-that-expands-to-larger-issues: we're talking creative nonfiction. No academic studies, no lit crit. The internet's filled with short nonfiction, so surprise us.

• We'll consider reviews/“reviews” of pretty much anything (including a Sweet Corn Festival or new talking-robot-toilet model), if they're funny, bizarre, and/or actually an essay.
• We have little taste for straight anecdotes, op-eds, and performances of suffering in the therapeutic mode. Things we've seen too much: cancer specifically, addiction, break-ups, "my coming-out story," granpa's war diary, mi-ma's cookies, "that time kids at school were jerks to me," white savior-ism. 
• For heavy topics (DV, CSA, queer-bashing, racist abuse, self harm, famine, war trauma, &c.) we like when they're addressed through a highly crafted text—plenty of examples in our archive. 
• Things we've not seen enough: formal invention, adventures, minority perspectives, collective action/mutual aid, things from the Midwest, things outside the USA, tales from Turtle Island, environmental disaster/success, truly weird crime, fun little tidbits from the library, music, puzzles & labyrinths, signs & portents. 

Interpret these suggestions as loosely as you see fit.