Sidle Creek

by Jolene McIlwain

Melville House, 2023

reviewed by Seana Graham

A beautiful collection of stories set in the hill country of western Pennsylvania. Most of the stories at least allude to Sidle Creek, a fictional river that …

Art by Nigel Cox

Can I Live with Myself Today?
Or: Reflections on Connection and Avoidance

“Inner Peace” is written on a magnetic sticker I put on my refrigerator in January as “My 2026 Word of Intention”—a tall order for …

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay: Insights and Prompts from Contemporary Writers and Teachers

edited by Heidi Czerwiec and Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh

Rose Metal Press, 2026

reviewed by Seana Graham

Although I have read …

Medicare for All, universal health care, and similar proposals have become politically charged terms, often dividing people along ideological lines before a meaningful discussion can even begin. That polarization makes it harder to examine a much more basic question: How …

Good Morning America by Rosalind Al-Aswad 1993

My early and late major life decisions were discussed in my two previous posts. Now, it is time to address my midlife decisions over two and a half decades, from the 1980s to …