Here’s Some Essays I Like

Here’s some very short essays I like. Reading them will be much better than watching the Oscars, I promise.

“The first thing I learned about Jacques Cousteau was a lie. A fairytale. It didn’t matter. I’ve been madly in love with him since.” — At Brevity, “The Blind Prophets of Easter Island” by Tessa Fontaine.

“When he saw a member of his family and it had been a little while since he’d seen the family member, the brother or mother or cousin or etc., he would want with terrible violence to touch them.” — At The Collagist, “Angband, or His 55 Desires” by Mike Meginnis.

“o hot water / knocking / rubber squeegee action for this number, Big Papa is grunt and thrust: grab that doozie palm to palm and twist the fucker’s head off. Pop.” At Fringe, “J’s AK” by Harmony Button.

“I’m learning sex from action figures. One with a yellow jumpsuit, flowered red hair, and white boots.” — At Connotation Press, “Action Figures” by Tim Gomez.

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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.

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