Indie Lit Round-Up: What to Read This Weekend [Vol 26: Sep 3]
Coil editor Leah Angstman rounds up the best literary pieces from the indie Internet for you to read this weekend.
There’s a lot of stuff on the Internet to read. Here, let me help you wade through the crap to get to the good stuff. This recurring column features stories, reviews, poems, interviews, essays, and literary whatnot that you might have missed, and you can come back every weekend for new great reads.
“Cobbs Creek is fifteen minutes from my home, but in over a decade I only visited once.” | L. LU talks about changing landscapes, losing nature to paved paths, and a sense of home in “Terraforming” at The Willowherb Review.
“Mount Pisgah, a sand dune, watches Lake Michigan, a wide freshwater sea.” | STEPHANIE KRZYWONOS talks about glaciers, family, and identity in “Glacial Erratic” at The Willowherb Review.
“No one at Sunny Wonders Amusement Park was more downtrodden about owner Barry Victor’s death than the twenty-seven mannequins of his likeness that stood like sentries across the sweltering, dilapidated grounds of his life’s work.” | JOHN CHROSTEK has a funny story about death, disturbance, and mannequins, “Man and His Kin,” up at Maudlin House.
“Like a lot of people, the closest thing I have to a meditation practice is making coffee every morning.” | STEVE EDWARDS has a perfect essay on meditation over coffee, “A Thousand Cups of Coffee,” over at The Sun Magazine.
“Something about a car running over a policeman and a second officer being injured.” | DAVID SEDARIS has a new story about his father, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” up at The New Yorker.
“We are walking along the coast of Ilha de Mozambique, passing carcasses of old pirate ships parked in the sand.” | JAMY BOND has a heartbreaking CNF flash of pain, shipwrecks, pirates, and pioneers, “Shipwrecked,” over at JMWW.
“On your fifteenth birthday at the bowling alley, your mother’s cheek turns to stone.” | MICHAEL TAGER has a new scifi/fantasy story, “Your Mother and Other Ancient Denizens,” up at Uncharted Mag.
“In 1973, the United States Congress declared August 26 as Women’s Equality Day to commemorate the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in 1920. In 2021, women’s participation in the workforce has dropped to a 33-year low, as they’ve been forced to forgo their careers amid the pandemic.” | JENN VANDE ZANDE talks about the depressing gap in parity on a range of factors for men and women, and how it’s getting worse not better, in “Women’s Equality Day 2021: No glass ceiling in sight from the edge” at The Future of Customer Engagement and Experience.
“Even though our county government tells me that I should always be prepared for summer forest fires, I never really am.” | STACY MURISON has an essay about forest fires and preparing the go-bag, “The essentials: What to pack when the fire is coming,” over at the Arizona Daily Sun.
“My English teacher counted my ‘you knows’ during a debate and the soft ‘th’ that made ‘dis’ out of ‘this’ and ‘dat’ out of ‘that.’ | ROSALEEN LYNCH has a perfect whisper/scream of a microfiction, “The Soft Th,” up at Janus Literary.
