Boots and photograph negatives

Creative Nonfiction: From Category Label Dumpster to Instruction Manual for Art

Growing up in the 80s and 90s, the term “creative nonfiction” hadn’t yet assembled itself into a term, or at least I hadn’t come across it. In middle school, we studied autobiographies and essays by Anne Frank, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ben Franklin. To my young self, these writers came with a stamp of authority because they could say, “I actually lived this.”

Partial image of geodesic sphere with purple and gold colors, against a black background.

The Heartbeat of the Earth

At approximately 2:00 p.m. on June 18, 2023, I learned of something that I thought was certain to change the world forever. It began like any other paradigm shift in recent memory. I learned about it the same way I learned about COVID-19, January 6th, Russia invading Ukraine, etc.—the same way anyone learns about any breaking news nowadays—by refreshing my newsfeed

Rachel White Headshot person in fuchsia with green background

Pelvis IV

Through the tender bone

you only see a gaping hole,

point out just how hollow

this pelvis is—so full of sky,

the moon phasing,

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

My father never drank except at Christmastime, I’ve
never seen a brown bottle drain until I was seven, stayed
at my grandmother’s house and knew the skank smell of alcohol, in
winter where cigarette smoke looks ghostly, the
ash tray a black patch of night, he sat on the steps in front