Issue 35 / The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 2

35 / 2008

From birth to death and everything in between

This fresh collection of fact-based narratives—mined from blogs, alternative papers, literary journals, and other out-of-the-way publications—engages and delights with exceptional work about topics from birth to death and everything in between. Stefan Fatsis, author of World Freak, traces the history of his baseball glove; Donovan Hohn chases a spilled cargo-load of rubber ducks bobbing along the Pacific currents; and Pagan Kennedy explores the hidden life of the creator of The Joy of Sex.

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Table of Contents

  • Lee Gutkind

    The “L” Word—And All the Rest of Us “Outsiders”

    In my memoir, Forever Fat, I tell the story of my bar mitzvah, during which I am tortured by the brown wool suit my mother forced me to wear.

  • Anne Trumbore

    Spite

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  • Desirae Matherly

    Final: Comprehensive, Roughly

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  • Sarah Miller-Davenport

    Here I Am in Bergdorf Goodman

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  • Gwendolyn Knapp

    Instead of the Rat Pack

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  • Rolf Potts

    The Art of Writing a Story about Walking across Andorra

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  • Laura Sewell Matter

    Pursuing the Great Bad Novelist

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  • Donovan Hohn

    Moby-Duck, or, The Synthetic Wilderness of Childhood

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  • Katie Campbell

    The Egg and I

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  • Emily Bernard

    Figurines

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  • Heidi Julavits

    The Writers in the Silos

    It requires neither imagination nor acumen to predict that our current conglomerating, lowest-common-denominator, demographically targeted publishing industry will soon achieve its streamlined apotheosis—a single, worldwide, Exxon Mobil-owned literary empire offering a list of seven books twice per year.

  • Vijay Seshadri

    My First Fairy Tale

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  • Patrick Madden

    A Sudden Pull Behind the Heart

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  • James Renner

    The Suicide Murder? of Joseph Kupchik

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  • Hauquan Chau

    Teaching the “F” Word

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  • Alice Bradley

    Hi, I’m Panicky.

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  • Susan M. Schultz

    Wednesday, August 23, 2006

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  • Patricia Brieschke

    Cracking Open

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  • K.G. Schneider

    Range of Desire

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  • Pagan Kennedy

    The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex: The Story of Alex Comfort, in Seventeen Positions

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  • David Bradley

    …By Any Other Name

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  • Ander Monson

    Ceremony

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  • Brian Oliu

    Anti-Aliasing

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  • Phil Trinh

    Everything That’s Wrong with Facebook

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  • Carol Richards

    It Was Nothing

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  • Rob Dobrenski

    Shrinks Get It Wrong Sometimes

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  • Stanley Jenkins

    George

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  • William deBuys

    Errands in the Forest

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  • Stefan Fatsis

    My Glove: A Biography

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