All posts tagged: creative nonfiction

Link and the Forest Temple Jeremy Fenske

Newfound, Journeys to HYRULE_

Published by Isaac Yuen

Delighted that my latest piece of creative nonfiction titled “Journeys to HYRULE_” has found the perfect home with Newfound, a nonprofit publisher and publication that explores how place shapes, identity, imagination, and understanding: “We believe that a richer experience of place—spaces human-made, natural, conceptual, or otherwise—is requisite in understanding ourselves and our world. Newfound is passionate about positively transforming how we relate to our habitats and bringing about better stewardship of our homes, neighborhoods, communities, cities, nations, and the globalized world at large.” —Why is Newfound important? Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda videogame series (both of which I have written about here on Ekostories), “Journeys” is a rumination on the lifelong bonds I’ve forged with a certain virtual world. I was particularly interested in exploring the notion of attachment to a digital realm that is constantly reimagined with each iteration, along with the feeling of returning to a familiar place I have never been: “…This is not my story but I know its shape. I am not the …

Lodestone, Tahoma Lit Review

Published by Isaac Yuen

Excited to have a flash nonfiction piece published in the latest issue of Tahoma Literary Review, a great journal produced with “the aim of contributing to and sustaining a healthy literary ecosystem.” A description of the themes explored in this volume: “The 25 selections in our Fall/Winter issue describe dreams and omens; bodies in motion; how we deal with fear and grief; what we inherit and what we pass on. The stories, essays, and poems range in time and geography from the drought-ridden Midwestern plains of the 1870s to present-day Cheung Chau, Hong Kong.” “Lodestone” takes place in that latter location, on the isle of Cheung Chau off the shores of Hong Kong, and revolves around a narrator’s return to a homeplace only to discover he is not the only one who has been drawn back. The featured photo may help you situate in the space, as it did for me when I finally sat down to write this piece. I feel especially fortunate to be in the company of some fantastic authors in this issue; …

What Matters, River Teeth Journal

Published by Isaac Yuen

Recently, I had the honour to contribute a short-short to “Beautiful Things”, the online section of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. River Teeth is one of the most well-known creative nonfiction publications around, and in my opinion has the most inspired name. On its origin: “…there are hard, cross-grained whorls of human experience that remain inexplicably lodged in us, long after the straight-grained narrative material that housed them has washed away. Most of these whorls are not stories, exactly: more often they’re self-contained images of shock or of inordinate empathy; moments of violence, uncaught dishonesty, tomfoolery; of mystical terror; lust; joy. These are our “river teeth”-the knots of experience that once tapped into our heartwood, and now defy the passing of time.” – David James Duncan On what “Beautiful Things” look like: “Glimpses, glimmers, meditations, moments, reflections, refractions, interrupted shadows, river shimmers, darkened mirrors, keyholes, kaleidoscopes, earring hoops, slabs of cracked granite, cracks where the light gets in. Beautiful things.” – River Teeth’s website I won’t spoil “What Matters” since it’s less than …

Rhythm, Hippocampus Magazine

Published by Isaac Yuen

I’m pleased to have a flash piece published in the January issue of Hippocampus, an online magazine dedicated to entertain, educate, and engage writers and readers of creative nonfiction. Rhythm is a 750-word meditation on the “zone” one can attain while playing a sport or writing a story, along with the fleeting joy that ensues from tapping into the flow. There is a part towards the end where I compare this mode with what it might be like to be an animal, of being wholly present, fully embodied in the here and now, the beauty in that certainty of being: “… For one length, the twenty-second out of the thirty-four I would eventually complete, I was a seal, dark and torpid, and my arms were fins with which I used to shape the world. For one length, just one, I shed all meaning, instead was meaning, until nothing was left but presence, before strength failed and form broke, and I was human once again.” Read the Piece Here

Zoomorphic Magazine, A Tapir’s Tale

Published by Isaac Yuen

I‘m pleased to announce that Zoomorphic Magazine has published one of my personal essays titled “A Tapir’s Tale”. From scientists and conservationists with research to share to nature writers with stories to tell, Zoomorphic is a great read for anyone interested in writing that “deepens our connection with wildlife and the more-than-human world”. “A Tapir’s Tale” begins with a childhood animal book and delves into an encounter I had while in Belize for field school a decade ago: “…When I concentrate memories begin to surface as flickers, like glints of minnows scattered by diving kingfishers, like flash sightings of otters slipping into dark waters. The dull knife edge of a nearby karst shore against palm. The airy wake trailing a pair of fishing bats on hair and scalp. Their wheeling forms crossing filigree shadows cast by overhanging trees. A ripe fig falls in the water and ripples out. Interplay between sound and silence. Layers and moments circling a creation unfinished. You shattered that tranquility for me.” I’m looking forward to delving into the latest issue. …