SHORT WORKS

Tell your young eyes to listen. There’s a reason this is my first lesson. No matter how much yours plead, growing wistful, don’t give them what they want: a prettied past. Make them SEE.

Cheryl was so mad, she thought she’d explode. She sat in front of the fireplace reading the paper.

Alice didn’t budge when he tickled the woman’s ribs until she laughed and one of her legs rose, crossing the other like a crane’s.

I watched my brother, and he watched the thing in the water.

Like all artists, I was born a witness. I watch and listen. I notice.

Fiction writers have long channeled grief over the death of a loved one into their work, but that impulse is intensified when the person commits suicide.

Nan participated in PechaKucha 12 on Nov. 19, 2013, held at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio. PechaKucha Nights bring together creative people and appreciative audiences in a unique slideshow and spoken essay format.

The way I remember it, I tried like hell not to marry him.

As a journalist in the early 1980s, Nan reported on theories regarding the origins of extraordinary violence. Here she describes her case study, confessed serial killer Henry Lee Lucas.

Is Henry Lee Lucas a vicious murderer of numerous strangers across the country, or a down-and-out drifter who became a scapegoat for overanxious lawmen?

Like Holden Caulfield, Cole criticizes adults, especially his biological parents.