Issue 10: Nonfiction
- On This Date in 1894, Nothing Happened by Kelly Luce
The sky had cleared but it didn't feel right. It should’ve rained this morning, but it didn’t, and so the whole day was thrown off. Like when you say you’re going to sneeze but you don’t—that’s how the sky felt.
[read full piece]
- Paroxysmal Event: A Personal History of Fainting by Rachel Jackson
Sometimes it even looks graceful, more accurately fitting the word, “swoon”—wrist to forehead, a gentle crumbling perhaps brought on by a too-tight corset. There were even special couches for this purpose in the Victorian age, “fainting sofas” on which one could elegantly recline while smelling salts were held beneath the nose. But in an even smaller subset of the already small percentage of the population prone to vasovagal syncope, an exclusive club to which I and a few members of my family belong, the fun continues with a sudden, violent stiffness in the limbs or uncontrolled shaking that resembles, but is not, a seizure.
[read full piece]
Return to Nonfiction Archives.
