Annita Sawyer’s memoir Smoking Cigarettes, Eating Glass is a gripping and moving account of her experiences in psychiatric hospitals. She shares her experiences and writing process with us. SL: Your memoir, Smoking Cigarettes, Eating Glass won the 2013...
April 1964 The day room air hung heavy, dense with the body odor that comes from waiting for bad news. As all twenty of us settled in, the atmosphere was hushed. Even Ellen, who ordinarily spoke loudly to anyone who would listen and usually ended up talking to...
The pattern I saw as a small child when I closed my eyes: concentric ovals in purple, red, and electric blue, with the oval rings vibrating around a few dots in the center, which vibrated too. The sound of my mother sitting on a sofa in our quiet house late in the...
I grew up in the American West and reside here, still. In the West, story is the amniotic fluid from which we are thrust. We may not later recognize its taste or scent or syrupy weight in our lungs, but neither are we inclined to distinguish the acrid pine in the...
All bad things must come to an end. Most of us drive back the way we came, caught up with thick but moving traffic on the interstates. But at the junctions of I-10 and I-12 we choke up and lose momentum, feeling farther from arrival the closer we get. Those of us...
We know what we smell like, okay? Hours and hours under the sun or smothered by night heat have us sweating coffee, sweating Red Bull. The clench of old cigarette smoke. Fast food and soda breath. We are covered in pet hair or the sticky evidence of children’s...
