Here’s Some Essays I Like

By

A couple weeks ago, I linked to a bunch of very short stories — stories that were superbly written but that only took a few moments to read.

People seemed to like that, so today, I’m doing the same thing with essays:

“There is a hole in the ozone layer but they say not to worry though the sheep who bear unfiltered light have milky eyes.”  — At elimae, “Dark Energy” by A’Dora Phillips. (This one blew me  away.)

“The man comes into your sight abruptly, weaving between a belching semi-truck graced with a colorful portrait of Hanuman the monkey god and a pair of women in kurtas on a motorcycle…” — At Flashquake, “Pilgrim” by Eli Hastings.

“One day in front of my computer I suddenly notice that I have been spelling it wrong. I mix up the final two letters of my last name, transposing them.” At Fringe, “The Problem With Having Too Many of the Same Letters in Your Name” by Nina Mamikunian.

“There were a dozen old German guys wearing full eagle feather headdresses. It was crazy.” — At Brevity, “Somebody Else’s Genocide” by Sherman Alexie.

Seth Fischer’s writing has twice been listed as notable in The Best American Essays and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize by several publications, including Guernica. He was the founding Sunday editor at The Rumpus and is the current nonfiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown. He is a Dornsife PhD Fellow at USC and been awarded fellowships and residencies by Ucross, Lambda Literary, Jentel, Ragdale, and elsewhere, and he teaches at the UCLA-Extension Writer’s Program and Antioch University, where he received his MFA. More from this author →