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©Jamie Miller

The stereotypes of feral, uncivilized  toothless hillbillies not willing to pull themselves out of poverty by their bootstraps are not always true. 

I go barefoot a lot, but I only  know one person missing teeth, and she lost hers in a mosh pit at a punk rock show. The coal mines owned my grandfather at the age of fourteen. He never learned to read and died of black lung. My mom has mental illness and dependency issues. My dad was rarely around and I remember him setting fire to his hat once and telling me he was doing magic tricks while chugging moonshine. My grandmother helped raise me. She had an eighth grade education, but was the smartest woman I’ve ever known. 

I grew up in a hollow that runs about ten miles. In those ten miles, there were two coal mines and at least six churches. Everything was always covered in coal soot so the trailer I lived in with my mother and sister was always black and dirty. That is why the trailers in my paintings are opera pink. My childhood was a stereotypical “Appalachian” narrative–poverty, dependency, mental illness, abuse. It always seemed so loud in our home, even when it was quiet. I always wore headphones and listened to mixtapes. It was the only time I could hear myself and have clear thoughts despite the chaos going on around me. I took solace in music and still do.

I always said I would leave West Virginia. I even to this day say it. It’s a very love/hate relationship. I could leave at any time, but I stay to fight, to make it a better place, and to be the voice sometimes for those who cannot speak. I often say it’s like I have Stockholm Syndrome. West Virginia is not an easy place to live. It’s not an easy place to make it, and it’s also somewhat easy to fall into a state of just existing, due to politics and the extraction of our wealth. Big Coal and Big Pharma are the rulers of a land that is home to the most hardworking, magical, complex humans you will meet anywhere. I stay for those folks and these mountains that cast spells. No one who isn’t from Appalachia will ever understand.

Telling stories–our stories–is a way to connect

I always love the underdog, the person who lives in that dirty coal trailer, but knows that they don’t have to accept that as the future. I love the storytellers who surprise you with their stories of resilience and take what you think you know about us and turn it upside down. I love old things that hold memories–cast off items, misfit broken dolls and toys. I love ghosts and daydreams. I love little towns and hollers in the country, porch stories, and kids who love punk rock because they believe it will save them.   

Artist Statement 

I am a product of the West Virginia stereotype but mine is a complicated story of heritage, history, and pride. It is granny witches, and the spells the mountains have cast on me that make me stay and use my art as a tool to fight. 

In my recent work, I incorporate layers of paint, symbolism, and folklore to portray the destruction of my mountain home. I invite the viewer in by using a bright color palette and childlike critters to create what seems like a beautiful safe space only upon further examination noticing the darkness. The mountains are bandaged; big coal owns this state. Big Pharma wants those who don’t leave to die by introducing millions of opioids into already fragile communities. Our waters are full of poison. It is a battle of good versus evil, the spirit of the Appalachian that refuses to succumb without a fight. It is the story of our people and the state I love in so much pain. 

Jamie Miller was born and raised in the West Virginia coalfields. She is a painter, textile artist, and activist. Find more of her art on our Featured Artist page.

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Creative Nonfiction, #12 Fall 2018

Christopher Cascio, Kid
Heidi Davidson-Drexel, Your Boss
Aliza Dube, Loved to Death
Anne Noonan, Stink Tree
Lisa Rizzo, Snowsuit Prisoners

Nikki Sambitsky, Penny Drop

Featured Artist

Peter Tavernise

NEWS:

We will open submissions again from December 14, 2018 – January 15, 2019.

  • Our guest blogger in Issue 12 is essayist Heidi Davidson-Drexel. Read thoughts on how she developed the narrator voice in “Your Boss.”
  • Suzanne Farrell Smith’s essay, “The Helping Man,” is nominated by Pembroke Magazine for Pushcart Prize. Congratulations and good luck! This fall Suzanne also had an essay published in Brevity, “If You Find a Mouse in a Glue Trap.” Finally, her essay “Work and Love” is published in Issue 8 of Adanna. Way to go, SFS!
  • Read our editor Mary Heather Noble’s blog post, On Writer’s Block: Notes from the Kitchen Island. “I’ve tried all kinds of ways to avoid doing this work. I tried moving far away, and when that didn’t help, I wrote and published a few scenes from that childhood path and then suffered the consequences. I’ve tried writing about other things. I’ve tried literally running away.” This is a gorgeous and vulnerable self-examination of, among other things, the mountain climbing we do as children and as adults.
  • Our former guest editor for Peter Tavernise is this issue’s Featured Artist — check out his gorgeous digitally created work!
  • Do you have a question for us? Write to us at Ask the Editor. In December, we will tackle the question, “What qualifies as childhood for your mission?” Read Heidi’s blog post about her authorial choices in her essay, Your Boss.
  • We ask you to follow our blog! We don’t post there often, but when we do it’s focused information you can use about writing and writers, as well as updates about our journal.
  • We are on Twitter and Facebook: Follow/Like us to stay in the loop on all things Longridge: @LongridgeReview and Longridge Editors LLC.

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The holidays are upon us, and we are thankful for all of the readers, writers, and artists who make Longridge Review possible!

We hope you will “follow” our blog posts — which are few and far between — to keep in touch with some innovations for this site in 2018. We would love to have your creativity be part of growing our mission via essays and art. You can also keep an eye on us via social media (see below).

  • Issue #9 is LIVE today!
  • Submissions for our Winter 2017-18 issue will open December 15, 2017
  • We are pleased that Molly Young Maass, District of Columbia, will join our board of readers and contributing editors for our next issue. Welcome, Molly!
  • In our current issue, creative advisor Suzanne Farrell Smith interviews her sister, Deb Farrell. We are truly honored to have Deb as our featured artist this issue. Don’t miss the intimate exchange between sisters that offers an unusually candid insight into Deb’s work.
  • We are on Twitter and Facebook! Follow us to stay in the loop on all things Longridge: @LongridgeReview and Longridge Editors LLC.

NOTE: Our mission results in our publishing uniquely sensitive narratives. Childhood experiences are formative, and tend to land in emotionally — and sometimes psychologically — difficult territory. While the writing is about childhood, these essays are not for children. Some essays contain adult language, explorations of sexuality, and instances of verbal or physical abuse. They also contain moments of light and love and humor. Thank you for reading and sharing responsibly. — EDG

In this issue:

Victims or Others?
Gina Ferrara (New Orleans) remembers a colorful crew of men who play cards at her grandfather’s bar and clubhouse in the French Quarter. “Chicago Mike” always seems to have an assortment of random gifts on him. One day, Gina and her sister are the recipients of some of those gifts, and she finds herself asking herself questions about what it means to be involved in something you’re not even sure you understand.

How to Be on Time
Andy Harper (Illinois) weaves a narrative that goes to an unexpected place. When he finds his young adult self beset by unexpected anxiety, he is determined to follow the bread crumbs to its origin. The conclusion is shocking. This essay broke a couple of hearts at our editorial table, and is an excellent example of why we publish Longridge Review.

Sepia
Anne Muccino (Kansas City) reflects on the first time she repeated a term spoken inside her family and realized it wasn’t something said aloud to others, most importantly not to the people being labeled with that word. This is a poignant snapshot of a child’s dawning awareness that not everything said casually or even said warmly has a casual or warm effect on others.

Shooting Stars
Jonathan Sonnenberg (New York City) deftly tells us something about himself by writing about an influential teacher.  Mr. Bell likes to ask his students prickly questions. Have they ever been drunk? Tried pot? Cocaine? The class is pretty used to his provocations, until one afternoon a question sucks the air out of room. Mr. Bell is after more than discomfort. He has something he needs them to know.

A Bowl Full of Jelly
Victoria Waddle (Claremont) is devastated by her grandmother’s death, but learns how to conjure her presence in dreams. These visits help, some, but become increasingly dissatisfying as her grandmother never comes fully back to who she was in life. Eventually, the dream woman sends a message that makes it plain her visits are over. But will she ever truly not be there, somewhere?

Sentence Enhancers
Teige Weidner (Oregon) has a story about his childhood that will ring familiar to too many readers. He is bullied, a lot, and the abuse is taking a toll. No one seems to appreciate how bad things are for young Teige, but they are about to find out. After all, we all only have so much fuse, and his is about to burn down.

p.s. Want to write for us? See submission guidelines here: Longridge Review SUBMIT

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Issue #7 went online in early May. Need some great reading? Catch up here with vibrant mixed media of Toti O’Brien (Pasadena), as well as diverse essays from an array of talented creative nonfiction writers.

Following are previews of the essays via their original Facebook and Twitter posts. Links to each essay are in the tweets.

NOTE: Our mission results in our publishing uniquely sensitive narratives. Childhood experiences are formative, and tend to land in emotionally — and sometimes psychologically — difficult territory. While the writing is about childhood, these essays are not for children. Some essays contain adult language, explorations of sexuality, and instances of verbal or physical abuse. They also contain moments of light and love and humor. Thank you for reading and sharing responsibly. — EDG

Abby Burns (Indiana)

“As a kid, I often found myself yearning to embody others, especially in those moments when people left me alone to my thoughts. Call it escapism, but when I was nine years old, Xena Warrior Princess used to take over my body. She would save a busload of children after a catastrophic car accident, pulling them from windows just as fire hit the gas tank and the vehicle exploded in the background.”

In Uninvited Hauntings reflects on imagined ghosts, then unmasks the real ones.

Michael Chin (New York)

“But perhaps it’s because he couldn’t speak the language that my grandfather was drawn to professional wrestling. Ostensibly a sport (one with so few rules, and such clear lines between good guys to cheer and bad guys to jeer) that he didn’t need the English language to follow what was happening, just eyesight to see the fights and a sense of hearing to follow who the crowd was rallying for and against.

It was my grandfather who drew my father into wrestling, after which my father introduced it to me.”

.‘s epic The Bionic Elbow. Promise, challenge, , , and

Minna Dubin (Berkeley)

“Like those nights in the woods, every shoplifted t-shirt or skimpy pair of underwear was another thing I managed to get over on the adults, over on authority, over on the voices that said, You don’t know anything – you’re just a chubby kid. Walking out of a store without paying was a game, and if I won, then I didn’t just beat the big bad guy at the end of round one. I beat the cameras, the end-of-the-aisle mirrors, the check-out girls, the dressing room helpers, and the detectors at the store exits. Stealing meant beating the whole system. Though I didn’t know exactly what all ‘the system’ entailed, I knew for sure it was the homing ground for the voices I heard.”

. recounts mysteries of female identity, adolescent obsessions, the lure of shoplifting.

Susan Grant (Maine)

“She did not know what to do. She had been playing with a neighbor several doors down, and now, her friend had to leave to go with her mother to the store. The little girl decided that she ought to go home and maybe get a cookie. As she approached the gate into her yard, she reached her tiny hand to open the latch, and he turned on her. The little girl will never forget the sounds that came from his mouth. Her hands shook at the memory.”

Susan Grant writes of something menacing a child from behind a gate. She wants 2 pass. Will she enter?

Amanda Kay (Pittsburgh)

“Living there, we were immersed in smoke. Jack had a cigarette in his hand from the moment he woke up to the moment he went to bed. Smoke was his personal halo. His skin was yellow-gray, his thoughts distracted as though his brain had never quite learned how to be sober after so many years of alcoholism… I didn’t understand for some time what it truly cost my mother to live in the same house with him again.”

Amanda Kay’s mom went 2 juvie 4 pulling a knife on her stepdad. He had it coming. Was it nature or nurture?

Gleah Powers (Santa Monica)

“We’ve been having some talks,” he said. “Your father realizes he made some bad choices. He’s on morphine and pretty much incoherent but he wants to see you. I called your mother and sister. They don’t want anything to do with him.”

. The longing for my father began at 21 & Bcame chronic 3 months B4 I turned 21

Helen, Ruggieri (New York)

“Lefties know the name of their condition, but introverts usually don’t. They have to figure it out later on. They’ll read Hamlet, years after the fact and say, Wow. There’s a man after my own heart. He knows what lies below the surface of life.”

Helen Ruggieri conjures as , remembers chains, life as an

Gretchen Uhrinek (Pennsylvania)

“We met on a playground. I, the ever-tenacious six-year old, was leader, chief, head honcho, and ruling monarch of a little thing I called the Vampire Club. It was a scam, of course. A poor kid in a rich school, I never intended on doing anything with the club. But for just ten smackaroos, any kid on the playground could join. Any kid except for Dan. He didn’t have any friends, and I didn’t have any friends, and I wanted nothing to do with him.”

Gretchen Uhrinek’s “Dan” Edgy, raw, & real. Sex, drugs, enemies, frenemies, then .

Featured Artist

Toti O’Brien (Pasadena)

“I have been a dancer for my whole life. I have often hoped the motion inhabiting my body would spill into my visual work, giving it some of its energy, its lightness, its joy.”

 

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  • Issue #6 is LIVE today!
  • Submissions for the Spring 2017 issue will be accepted from 02/01/01 to 04/01/17.
  • Featured artist Lorette C. Luzajic is offering Longridge Review readers a generous discount on her work. Visit our page dedicated to her for the details!
  • Creative Advisor  Suzanne Farrell Smith’s essay, “Another Version of Us,” will be included in Selected Memories, an anthology of true stories and the first-ever book title from Hippocampus Magazine and Books. Suzanne will read her essay at Hippocampus’s AWP event in February. You can pre-order Selected Memories here.
  • Contributing Editor Mary Heather Noble’s essay “Eulogy for an Owl” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the editors of Creative Nonfiction.
  • Editor Elizabeth Gaucher’s flash creative nonfiction, “Underneath,” was chosen by editors Valley Haggard and Sarah Allen Short for Life in 10 Minutes’ first print anthology.
  • Gaucher’s essay, “Allons, Enfants: A Young Appalachian in Paris,” was nominated by the editors of Still: The Journal for a Pushcart Prize.
  • Our editors are pleased to announce our first-ever Pushcart Prize nomination, Mary Gustafson’s “Time Stops.”
  • Please consider a dontation, large or small, to support Longridge Review: PayPal.Me/LongridgeEditorsLLC. We do not charge a submission fee or accept commercial advertising. Our mission is supported entirely by volunteers.
  • We are on Twitter! Follow us to stay in the loop on all things Longridge: @LongridgeReview

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The-Journey-of-Life-An-Open-Road.
“The Journey of Life, An Open Road” watercolor and ink — Sharon Lyn Stackpole

News:

  • Our next submission period will be in the Fall. Sign up to follow us (see the bottom middle area of our home page) to receive an email notification when submissions open.
  • We are thrilled that Mary Heather Noble has joined Longridge Review as a reader and contributing editor. She is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine.  She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geology from The Ohio State University, and a Master’s degree in Environmental Science from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.  She lives with her husband and two daughters in Vermont after living in Oregon for nine years. Learn more about MHN on her website, Mary Heather Noble dot com
  • Mary Heather recently was named a finalist by Bellingham Review for the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction for her essay, “Eulogy for an Owl.”
  • Suzanne Farrell Smith’s essay on mothering twins in the NICU is forthcoming from Under the Gum Tree. UGT is a storytelling project, publishing creative nonfiction in the form of a micro-magazine. Tagline: Tell Stories without Shame
  • Editor Elizabeth Gaucher’s essay, “Allons, Enfants: A Young Appalachian in Paris,” appears now in the Summer 2016 issue of Still: The Journal.
  • We are on Twitter and Facebook! Follow us to stay in the loop on all things Longridge: @LongridgeReview and Longridge Editors LLC.

 

Issue #4, Meet Our Writers

  • manhood, /ˈmanˌho͝od/, noun

Gregory Fletcher (NYC) tells the tender yet complicated story behind his personal evolution into manhood. What does that word mean, anyway, manhood? And does it matter who defines it? Can a “real man” be provided for by his grandmother and come to believe in himself in an authentic way? Read this unique essay to broaden your understanding of identity, independence, and love.

  • Sink or Swim

Rich H. Kenney, Jr., (Nebraska) returns to a harrowing summer filled with perceived monsters, hostile adults, and an unavoidable life-and-death encounter with his own anxiety. Despite all of this, somehow, he weaves mild humor and courage toward a conclusion that will make you proud to be human. Read his essay and be reminded how strong people can be.

  • Doll Blanket

Karen McDermott (Los Angeles) There are times when the sheer breathtaking honesty of an essay leaves me very quiet for a long time. “Doll Blanket” is such a work. If you write, you will recognize how difficult it can be to disclose the events Karen describes here, but even more how so it is to disclose the feelings. If you are mostly a reader, you will recognize it as well. Few essays will lay it bare like this one does.

  • The Snake

Mariana McDonald (Georgia) reminds us that knowing guilt and even some concept of sin comes early in life. A child perceives danger, reports said danger, a life ends — but the child’s trouble is just beginning. This deceptively simple narrative has all the great themes of unforgettable tales like Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Crane’s The Blue Hotel, Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and the Garden of Eden myth. At the same, it avoids feeling derivative by staying true to one girl’s unique life-changing event. Don’t miss this one.

  • Heritage Pass

J. R. Tappenden (St. Louis) shines light on a hard reality, that some of our favorite childhood memories can sometimes be tied to an ugly truth. Gorgeous old airplanes open up the world of flight and freedom. But in the end, they once had a dark purpose. How do any of us balance the beautiful and the dreadful? Once we understand, can we pass on the things we love to those we love in a moral way?

  • That Good Hair

Bobby Wilson (China) writes about his hair. Or, well, does he? His hair is a part of everything, but as you roll through this fast-paced narrative, at some point you will start to realize that hair is the vehicle on which you travel, and from which you see the writer’s experience. Early lines like, “My brother and I embarked on eight long years of hair purgatory,” made this an essay one we couldn’t resist. Being “full Black” makes finding a barber a priority. Wave amplitudes. Cornrows. Hairlines. Tapers. Tweezers, razors, gel, doo rags. Good hair. More than anything else, Wilson explores what it means to relax and learn to love yourself.

Featured Artist

Sharon Lyn Stackpole (West Virginia) studied painting and art history at West Virginia University under the tutelage of the renowned professor and art historian Marian Hollinger. Her warm and delicate work glows on the pages of Issue 4.

You can find it all and more right here: Longridge Review #4, Spring 2016.

p.s. Want to write for us? See submission guidelines here: Longridge Review SUBMIT

We are committed to not charging fees to submit work. At the same time, we welcome your support!

It costs $200 a year to use our submissions manager, and all of our editorial talent is volunteer. If you would like to help us out, you may make a contribution here: PayPal.Me/LongridgeEditorsLLC.

All support will be recognized in future issues of LR with donor permission. Thank you!