I want to tell you of a house on fire. And, of virga, rain that evaporates before it reaches the ground.***I’m still twenty-three when I get married and move to New Orleans. It’s March of 2007. Sometime around my birthday in June, I realize what I’ve done.***The previous summer, my heart breaks for the first … Continue reading “Crescent City” by Anna Oberg, 2020 Nonfiction Spring/Summer Contest Winner
It’s bedtime so we’re embracing our new roles:she’s watching the baby monitor and listeningto an Audible, I’m reading a paperback andthinking, thinking so much I need to turn the paper backand forth and back and forthlike the rocking I just did for the little staron the little screen atop the little table next to an oversized bed … Continue reading “Brown Hair, Gray-Blue Eyes” by Jay J. Dermer, 2020 Poetry Spring/Summer Contest Winner
I remember those lazy summers; hot as the barrel of a just-shot pistol, the asphalt warping before your eyes. The days pile endlessly atop one another, punctuated only by Church on a Sunday, where my calico dress would scratch at my sweat-soaked back and my hair would curl up in damp protest by my ears. … Continue reading “The Death of Jabez Chew” by Sally Bosson, 2020 Spring/Summer Contest Winner
Hello, CausewayLit readers,My name is Kristen Dalli, and along with Victoria Buitron, I serve as one of Causeway’s Co-Editors-in-Chief. As readers, writers, and lovers of words, Victoria and I compiled a list of our most recent reads to share with all of you. While this hasn’t been an ideal time for many things, it has … Continue reading The CausewayLit Editors’ Two-Line Book Reviews on Their Pandemic Reads
Since we started dating four years ago, my boyfriend and I have wanted to take a trip to Baltimore. The National Aquarium for him, Edgar Allan Poe’s gravesite for me, and restaurants that serve good quality crab cakes for the both of us. With art museums and a massive Barnes and Noble bookstore to fill … Continue reading You’re Allowed to Feel: Guidance from Characters in YA Fiction
In Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose says that by deliberate and slow “close reading” works in literature written by the masters, we become better writers. We also discover that there are no rules.We learn something new rereading a classic, and if we dissect a story to see how it’s constructed, a kind of osmosis … Continue reading “No Rules” in Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
It is interesting how, as a student of poetry – and therefore operating with an acute awareness of one’s infantile blindness when the universe is flashing full of brilliant stars – one can develop, without even realizing it, an insensitivity to the discomfort of encountering the unknown. “Assault to Abjury” is a poem I have … Continue reading On “Assault to Abjury” by Raymond McDaniel
My name is Marina, and I’m addicted to books.They’re everywhere. I stack them anywhere there is an open space. My closet holds more books than clothes. Books serve as stands for mirrors, lamps, and jewelry stands. A bench I expected to refurbish years ago has become a makeshift bookcase, with books of all kinds stacked … Continue reading Surrounded: How Books Are Keeping Me Going in Quarantine
I work in a bookstore. Well, I should probably say: I worked in a bookstore until the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 which caused an indefinite furlough. I have since filed for unemployment alongside 6.6 million other Americans last week alone.But technically, yes, I work in a bookstore.We are all book people here. If you’re reading … Continue reading Are Books Essential? Working in a Bookstore Amidst a Pandemic
New York - 2008 I am a liar, and I don’t know how to stop. My friend, José, tells me I need to. He tells me that people need to see our faces. He says that people like us are here at this university, in this English Ph.D. program, because our classmates, our professors and … Continue reading Baby Steps by Kim Vose, 2020 Non-Fiction Winter Contest Winner
