“Our present-tense human experience is like a living tree growing by a river. The current in the river is the passing of time. Our individual pasts are like the same tree fallen in the river, drowned now, and disintegrating with surprising speed. We resist time’s flow with our memories and language, with our stories ”   

~ David James Duncan

Issue 25.2

Featuring the writing of Sean Enfield, Robert W. Fieseler, Melody Glenn, Hannibal Hamlin, Jenna Hammerich, Timothy J. Hillegonds, Sarah Minor, Ali Saperstein.

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Cover of River Teeth 25.2

River Teeth is a biannual journal combining the best of creative nonfiction, including narrative reportage, essays, and memoir, with critical essays that explore the impact of nonfiction narrative on the lives of its writers, subjects, and readers.

Beautiful Things

River Teeth‘s weekly online magazine, Beautiful Things, features micro-essays (of 250 words or fewer) that look closely to find beauty and meaning in the everyday.

River Teeth Revisited

Here at River Teeth, we love essays. We love reading essays, choosing essays, and writing essays. We love essays that feel urgent, essays we can’t put down, and essays that don’t turn away when the truth gets difficult or slippery.

We also like to think about how the best essays work—and that’s why we have created the online feature: River Teeth Revisited.

Share your essays with River Teeth

River Teeth accepts submissions of creative nonfiction through Submittable from September 1 to December 1 and January 1 to April 1.

The Book Prize

River Teeth‘s editors conduct a yearly national contest for a book-length manuscript of literary nonfiction in English. All manuscripts are screened by the co-editors of River Teeth. The contest winner receives $1,000 and publication by The University of New Mexico Press.

Beautiful Things: a weekly online magazine of micro-essays
Rearview
Rearview

Rearview

By Ainsley McWha
One year post escape from the city—with its sharp, steely edges and shadowy tunnels; the collective vibrations, unwelcome grazes, and peering eyes of eight million urgent, shouting strangers—all I do these days is notice: clouds; birdsong; three droplets of morning dew along a blade of grass...

Respite

Respite

By Tess Kelly
That June, trees crisped and browned. Grass yellowed like old newspapers. Each morning I filled my blue plastic watering can at the outdoor spigot and carried it across the garden to the birdbath, a basin of concrete nestled beneath an Ironwood...

Marriage, Death Row
Marriage, Death Row

Marriage, Death Row

By Jodie English
The line goes dead two minutes into the month’s only phone call, his face flat against concrete, ankles raw from shackle sores, his hand cuffed to a metal plate high on the wall, fingers swollen, saying hello, hello as if she could hear him, as if the struck match of her voice was still there...

Latest News …

Brooke Champagne, Book Reviews Editor

Brooke Champagne Joins the River Teeth Team

Hello from the confluence of River Teeth here at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, on the kind of gorgeous fall day that makes a person want to leash up the dog and head out into the fields and woods–but not so fast because submissions opened on September 1st and we’ve got a lot of reading to do. Happily, we love to read. 

Meet River Teeth’s Spring 2024 Interns

Hello! We are excited to shine light on some of the creative minds and passionate spirits that have been working with us this past spring semester: our interns! From painting the beautiful rocks you might’ve seen at AWP to writing captions for Instagram posts to moving book reviews from our old website to our new website - our interns have been with us through it all and we couldn’t have done it without them. Each intern brings a unique blend of enthusiasm, curiosity, and dedication to our team. They had so much fun interviewing each other for this article, so we hope you enjoy getting a glimpse of them as much as we have loved working with them.