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.

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.

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.

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.