Great New American Essays

Today’s spotlight is on the literary magazine The Threepenny Review. I’m joined by the magazine’s founding and current Editor, Wendy Lesser.Wendy Lesser is the author of twelve nonfiction books and one novel; her latest book, entitled Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery, came out from Farrar Straus & Giroux in May 2020. She has received awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and many other institutions, and she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences as well as of the New York Institute for the Humanities. Her journalistic writing about literature, dance, film, and music has appeared in a number of periodicals in America and abroad. Born in California and educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and UC Berkeley, Lesser now divides her time between Berkeley and New York. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Christie Hodgen is the author of four books of fiction, most recently the novel Boy Meets Girl, which won the 2020 AWP Award for the Novel. Her short fiction and essays have been included in dozens of literary journals and have won two Pushcart Prizes. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and is the editor of New Letters.A sense of place looms large in the first essay discussed in this episode, “Disintegration” by Karen Fisher. Her job in the hinterlands of east New Orleans involves recycling, hogs that wander around and a boss who is equally beastly as he threatens to fire her. Wrestling for control of her circumstances is tough for the author, in a place that writes “off neglect as charm.” In “On Emptiness” by Joyde Dehli, a poetic sensibility shines. Fear is in the air, as Dehli notes that in response one can flee, fight, freeze or faint, to which might be added a fifth option: fawning, which the author does beautifully over a world that defies definition. In “Right Now, I’m a Chauffeur” by Bud Jennings get ready for sharp-tongued discourse. The narrator’s mom drops line like “Dullards like that should only be allowed cockroaches as pets,” and the essay goes from there in exploring what it’s like to come home to care for your mom versus the lively, coming-out life you led in New York City. Finally, in “A Little Slice of the Moon” by Summer Hammond we encounter a young girl from a Jehovah’s Witnesses family that finds a door into a wider world through, of all things, a job at McDonalds. You’ll find yourself rooting for her to find romance and more.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit this site. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Catherine Segurson is the founding editor of Catamaran. She’s a painter, videographer and creative writer who graduated from the Master of Fine Arts program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Prior to founding Catamaran 12 years ago, she worked at both Zeotrope and ZYZZYVA literary magazines.California-based Catamaran focuses often on the life of the artist, and even more frequently on nature and the environment. The first of the essays discussed in this episode is “What Would Odysseus Do?” by Melanie Faranello. Her psychiatrist father, a Greek man, was always urging his patients to be bold and take on risks. His daughter, the author, does likewise by daring to write her dad imaginative letters as a girl, supposedly seeking his clinical advice. In “Ten Charms Against the Future” by Steve Wing, the first five vignettes offer examples of what each of the five senses offer in appreciating nature. Sight and sound remain vital as this sensual essay ends with the author’s whispering the word “shelter” repeatedly. In “Deserts” by Charles Hood, the honesty and obstinacy of harsh, open landscapes the world over gain the spotlight. What other essay will take you from Islam to atomic bombs and space aliens so adroitly? In “In the Beginning Was the Tree,” Patricia Canright Smith goes from confessing, “I was never a fan of trees,” to “I wish I spoke Tree” based on visiting the world’s tallest, largest, as well as oldest tree, all three of them located in California.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit this site. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ronald Spatz is the editor-in-chief and co-founding editor of Alaska Quarterly Review. A formal National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Mr. Spatz has been recognized with Alaska State Governor’s Awards in Humanities and the Arts. He is currently a full professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he also served as the founding Dean of the University Honors College and Undergraduate Research & Scholarship and as the Director of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing.Ronald Spatz’s abiding goal for Alaska Quarterly Review is to be innovative, risk-taking, and truth-seeking, all virtues born out during this interview and by the four essays discussed here. In “Hungry Ghost” by May-lee Chaie, a cascading series of misogynistic and racist acts within the family have contributed to a devastating degree of low self-esteem. The essay confronts the emotional abyss that plagues all concerned. In “Once” by Michael Bogan, the fairy-tale like qualities of a teenage romance become exposed to the harsh realities of mutual betrayal, and a marriage that ultimately crumbles. In “Mother Matter” by Meil Sloan the point of view shifts between the first- and second-person as the author deals with a suicidal, autistic son whose tribulations cause his mother to dip into her inner resources while at the same time seeking answers from physics as to how the world works. Finally, in “The Cave” by Debbie Urbanski an intrusive narrator transforms a short story into a hybrid piece, with meta-commentary about the act of writing and the search for what really was going on beneath the surface during a family outing gone wrong.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit this site. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John Kuligowski is a Nonfiction Assistant Editor at Prairie Schooner and also currently a PhD student in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He worked as an assistant editor for volumes 392 and 394 of the Dictionary of Literary Biography and has published in a number of venues both online and in print. Zainab Omaki is likewise a Nonfiction Assistant Editor at the magazine and has writings in Callaloo, The Rumpus, LA Review and elsewhere. Her novel-in-progress has funding both abroad and from the Nebraska Arts Council. Like John, she’s a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.Prairie Schooner has a long legacy, stretching back to 1928, making it arguably the country’s longest continuous literary magazine. In this episode, the focus is on essays from two recent issues, beginning with “Summer Blues” by Hantian Zhang. For anyone who ever read William Gass’s medication, On Being Blue, this will serve as an interesting sequel. The theme or mood is signaled by the Portuguese word “saudale,” a desire for something absent, for the essay is set in Lisbon. In “Holden Caulfield Builds a House” by Andrew Erkkila, the setting jumps to Jersey City and the renovation of a house whose previous owner was a Viet Nam vet who painted the names of fallen colleagues in blood and excrement. Suffice to say, it’s a monumental tasks that nearly undoes the couple funding the upgrade. In “On grief, sex, and kidneys,” Afton Montgomery explores surgery’s impact on one’s psyche and even more identity. Finally, in “On the Move, or Looking to Settle Down,” Maya Marshall makes a road trip as an African-American woman traveling the South, knowing that danger can always lurk and yet mustn’t become an excuse for limiting oneself. Still, it’s not easy when, for instance, the sight of a dead deer makes her identify with it due to sharing a common color and the risks inherent in motion.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit this site. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jim Hicks is the Executive Editor of the Massachusetts Review, a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at UMass Amherst, and a translator of literature from Italian, French, Spanish, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. His latest book is Lessons from Sarajevo: A War Stories Primer. Shailja Patel is the Public Affairs Editor of the Massachusetts Review, a poet, essayist, and theatre and visual artist. She is the author of Migritude.The Massachusetts Review generally focuses on the world at large, versus personal essays. Indeed, as Shailja Patel says in this episode, the magazine is about “freedom writing” that necessarily creates some discomfort in readers as tough topics get tackled. In this case, that billing fits well “An Introduction to Exile” by Oz Johnson, where religious conversion means we’re hearing from a Filipina Jew teaching herself about the Arab-Israeli conflict in ways her rabbi wishes she wouldn’t. In turn, in “Roe: Telling the Tale” by Joyce Avrech Berkman, we encounter a historical framing that shows that reproductive rights were common in America until the period following the Civil War, which was of course about slavery and seeking to control others in ways that still echo in the battle over abortion. How to address injustice and abuse? Amba Azaad has a proposal in “Fire to the Grass,” which might at first glance appear to be an ecological essay but quickly proves to be about using Radical Unforgiveness to create a community response that challenges abuse. Finally, this episode touches on “Thirty-Two Eulogies” by Dan Leach, where understanding what the Male Gaze entails is part of the author’s evolution as he reflects on sexual dynamics, power and control, as vividly represented by the infamous rape scene that Leach remembers from watching the movie Deliverance with his dad long ago.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit this site. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bradford Morrow is an American novelist, editor, essayist, poet, and children’s book author. A professor of literature and Bard Center Fellow at Bard College, he is the founding editor of Conjunctions literary magazine. In 2020, he published The Forger’s Daughter, which the New York Times named a “Ten Best Crime Novels of 2020 selection.” His tenth novel, The Forger’s Requiem, will be released early next year.Three essays from the Ways of Water issue are discussed today: Kristin Posehn’s “The Wave Readers” about Marshall Island natives using their intuitive, sensory skillset to navigate far-flung islands that sit only about seven feet above water; Ryan Habermeyer’s “A North American Field Guide to Glaciers,” a futuristic short story with the inklings of being a work of speculative nonfiction; and Heather Altfeld,’s “With Their Feet in the Water and Their Heads in the Fire” about dealing with intense heat, scorpions, and more, in Morocco. In each case, the climate poses unique challenges and lyrical narrative prose responses in kind with often poignant insights. A final essay covered here is Alyssa Pelish’s “The Four Notes,” a narrative discourse that displays a profound knowledge of classical music.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit this site. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Justin Gardiner is the author of two nonfiction books and a collection of poetry. His most recent title is the book-length lyric essay Small Altars, published by Tupelo Press in 2024. Besides his role as Nonfiction Editor for Southern Humanities Review, Justin is also an Associate Professor at Auburn University.Founded in 1967, SHR considers subject matter both within and beyond the South. The magazine has had Justin Gardiner as its nonfiction editor for the past half decade. Four essays are discussed in the episode, with most of all of them showing evidence of the associative qualities that Gardiner, as a poet, enjoys in whatever genre. In this case, we started with Lia Greenwell’s essay “Your Soul Doesn’t Need You.” While ostensibly an essay about a carjacking she experienced, it goes wider to consider alike how well both more cognitively based therapy and poetry that speaks to one’s soul can aid recovery. In Leslie Stainton’s “Here with You,” an understanding of how the artist Joseph Cornell’s boxes reflect his life with a brother who suffered from cerebral palsy parallels the circumstances of the author’s own, younger sister. Delicacy is the order of the day. In Ceridwen Hall’s essay, “Submarine Reconnaissance: Bodies, Permutations, Voyages,” Hall delves into whether submarines are “female” (as her mom believes) or a “he” when in combat, along with many fascinating aspects of serving aboard a submarine and the “aquatic” nature of our memories and the way we must constantly “refit” our thinking. The other, remaining essay, Jennifer Taylor-Skinner’s “I Don’t Want Somebody in My House,” highlights the grand piano that serves as her companion, in contrast to how an esoteric French composer (Erik Satie) had two baby grand pianos stacked atop each other in his southern France villa. Again, expect the unexpected.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit this site. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robert Boyers founded the quarterly Salmagundi in 1965 and has been its editor in chief ever since. He’s the author of 12 books, including most recently Maestros Monsters: Days & Nights with Sontag and Steiner and before that The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, The Academy and the Hunt for Political Heresies. Besides teaching at Skidmore College, he directs the New York State Summer Writers Institute.Salmagundi rightly prides itself on hosting wide-ranging, inquisitive discussions of major topics involving race, gender, literature, psychology and so much more. This discussion goes in depth on four entries from the magazine. First up: “Talking Race Matters: A Conversation with John McWhorter & Thomas Chatterton Williams” explores the limits of racial essentialism as well as total assimilation that risks denying what is unique about the Black perspective and experience. A second piece is Elizabeth Benedict’s essay, “What’s the Matter with Sex?” It tackles how far the influence of pornography has gone (astray) as a training ground that leads young men into often degrading behavior to the women they are intimate with, including the use of choking as a form of eroticism. “The Failure of Censorship” by Adam Phillips looks at how our desires endanger us and yet at the same time to deny them denies aspects of ourselves. When is and isn’t self-censorship fruitful? Finally, Salmagundi hosted a symposium called “Can the American Meritocracy Get Religion?” Five writers are responding to an editorial by Ross Douthat in the New York Times. All found Doughat’s views too narrow or incoherent to be persuasive.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit this site. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sumanth Prabhaker is the editor-in-chief of Orion and the founding editor of Madra Press. He earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he was an editor for the journal Ecotone.Founded in 1982, Orion has evolved as a magazine over the years from the quieter, reverential environmental sensitivity that continues to distinguish it into also a wider awareness of global injustices that especially impact the Global South. In this episode, three essays were discussed that under his leadership, Sumanth Prabhaker nurtured into existence over a span that sometimes stretched into years. First among them is “How the Lark Got Her Crest” by Marianne Jay Erhardt from the Summer 2023 issue. It works from the slightest of bases, the few lines of Aesop’s fable about a lark, into a rather profound piece about how one might bury one’s father “in your head’ like the lark does. Language and honoring one’s parent becomes the grounding in this case. Second up, “The Other Bibles” by Katrina Vanderberg from the Spring 2024 issue began as almost a lark: why not include a book review of The Bible in a special issue devoted to religious rituals? The essay is at once a memorial to a husband who died of AIDS as a result of poorly monitored blood transfusions meant to help treat his hemophilia, as well as exploring the spiritual ecology of texts that come to us via illustrations in Bibles or the handiwork of the Earth itself. Third, the episode concludes by discussing “Natural Selection” by Erica Berry from the Winter 2023 issue. A Tinder ad about dating practices led into a piece on romance and even four Romance novels also written during the Year Without a Summer in 1916 when a volcanic eruption in Indonesia caused famine and disease and led, among other output, to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley setting to work on Frankenstein.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.