“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 26.1
Featuring the writing of Richard Bausch, David Fowler, George Estreich, Stephen Haines, Heather Lanier, Will McMillan, Lindsey Pharr, Suzanne Roberts, Jennifer Taylor-Skinner, William Torrey, and Nicole Walker.
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.
It Seemed Like Everything Was Still Before Us
By H.K. Hummel
While students loitered over their books at the cafe tables, a boy named Adam taught me how to spin the batter on the griddle...
My Sister Teaches Me How to Dice an Onion
By Jessica Franken
What on earth are you doing? she says, (my mistake was cutting the ends off first...
He Comes Back for the Curtains
By Jill Currie
After all that, he comes back for the curtains. The blackout curtains that helped him sleep in on so many school days—past the alarms I begged him to set, past all my fruitless shouting, past noon...
Latest News …
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.
Beth Nguyen Announced As River Teeth’s 2024 Literary Nonfiction Book Prize Judge
by Ethan Rice
"We are thrilled to announce the final judge for the 2024 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize. Beth Nguyen is an author and professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing..."
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.