Map Literary

Category: Nonfiction

  • Joanna Clapps Herman

    FLESH, BONE, AND SONG My father’s bones are a version of him. The structuring ground inside, a connecting architecture. Lightweight, strong, dense, his bones protected his heart, his lungs, held up his belly and all the rest. Bones bind and support, connect us to ourselves. They allow us to move, go forward, to change. My…

  • Patrick Kennedy

      WORLD WITHOUT END: A BOOK OF PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS   I   When I was in parochial school, a nun from the missions came to visit my class. The nun wore a light gray habit. The nuns who taught us wore a lot of black and a little white.   Our teacher turned the lights…

  • Jamie Quatro

    A Cupcake Boutique of One’s Own (or, Mrs. Woolf Said She Would End the Recession Herself) But, you may say, we asked you to speak about the current economic recession; what has it got to do with a cupcake boutique of one’s own? I will try to explain. I sat down upon a kitchen stool…

  • Samina Najmi

    → 2012 Map Literary Nonfiction Prize ← ABDUL      for my Abbu           As a professor of multiethnic American literature, I often teach the writings of immigrant authors. We ponder what it means to speak of “home” and belonging, and their opposites: homelessness, exile, and the experience of displacement so layered that people can spend their lifetimes unpeeling, unfolding,…

  • Tara McDaniel

    CARNAGE IN THE TIME OF GAGA:  A ROMP IN THE AESTHETIC FIELD OF GURLESQUE POETICS   A decade ago two Gen X female poets, Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg, identified an emerging trend among disparate female poets born of the same generation. It was not a theory or an organized movement but rather a new…

  • Katie Kohler

    2012 Map Literary Nonfiction Contest Honorable Mention     10/31/98           I am a cautionary tale. I am the after-school special you tell your college-bound daughter to watch, the pamphlet on drinking/date rape/safe sex you pick up at the university health center. If you work up the nerve to listen to my story, you cannot help…

  • Terry Dubow

    2012 Map Literary Nonfiction Prize Honorable Mention     OTHER MONSTERS When filling a pothole, it’s important to pay close attention to the lip – that line where the new clean, black asphalt meets the existing road. This is especially true when the pothole sits at the bottom of the hill that neurosurgeons such as…