atatnall

A Donkey Shit Christmas | Joy Ellison

December 16, 2015 by atatnall

“I cannot believe,” I announce to my mother and father from the back seat of the car, “that there will be a live donkey at church today.” We are driving to the small Quaker meetinghouse my family has attended for nearly two decades. When I was a child, I was a wise man in the pageant for three years running. I wore a maroon choir robe, a paper crown, and a garland of crumbled tinsel, saved and reused like it really […]

Categories: Essay Fiesta, Joy Ellison

Every Single Trumpet | Maggie Andersen

December 9, 2015 by atatnall

The pregnancy was lovely. John and I were more in love than ever. I wore my girlfriends’ hand-me-down maternity clothes, craved apples and apple juice and applesauce. I read Louise Erdrich’s memoir about early motherhood and What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I would be lying propped up in bed reading when John came home, he would tell about his day, and the baby would start to kick at the sound of his father’s voice. Every. Single. Time. We celebrated […]

Categories: Maggie Andersen, Story Club North Side

My Mother, My Daughter, My Self | Diane Kastiel

November 18, 2015 by atatnall

I lost my mother when I was 15. I don’t mean that’s when she died – I mean that’s when she stopped being my mom. My parents’ tortured marriage had finally ended, and my mother wanted my three sisters and I to choose sides. When I refused she chose for me, leaving any parenting I was going to get to my father. For a variety of reasons, I couldn’t live with my dad. So I stayed with my mom, but […]

Categories: Diane Kastiel, Story Club North Side

The Cab Driver | Meryl Williams

November 11, 2015 by atatnall

It’s December. A cab driver picks me up on my way home from a friend’s Christmas party. The driver of Yellow Cab medallion number 4520 spends the next several miles trying to coerce me to sleep with him after his shift ends at midnight, in just 20 minutes. I tell him no and change the subject, again and again. He persists. A sign in front of the passenger seat tells me his cab number and directs passengers to report incidents […]

Categories: Essay Fiesta, Meryl Williams

Hairbrained | Cat Hammond

November 4, 2015 by atatnall

“You’re pretty strong for a girl.” In retrospect, I believe it was those six brief but toxic words that sounded the death knell for the beautiful, flowing locks of sandy brown hair I sported as an eight-year-old. They were uttered to me at the St. Croix Valley YMCA summer day camp after an archery lesson left a blunt-tipped arrow embedded firmly in a hay bale, unyielding as Excalibur to the pre-adolescent grasp of my fellow campers. In an uncharacteristically bold […]

Categories: Cat Hammond, Story Club Minneapolis

The Name You Give Yourself | Ellen Blum Barish

October 28, 2015 by atatnall

So there’s the name you are bestowed at birth, the one on that certificate with the curlicue border that you can never find when you need it for some official purpose. Then there’s the name you get from your mother or your older brother or your cousin that highlights some attribute that only they see, or maybe, their rhyming abilities – like in my case, Ellie Bellie, Ellen Ellen Watermelon or, my personal favorite, Ellen Blum the Sugar Blum For […]

Categories: Ellen Blum Barish, Story Club North Side

Ask | C.A. Aiken

October 21, 2015 by atatnall

I have a friend. I use the word friend because the word fuckbuddy is, as of late, something as ethereal as the beautiful human-unicorn. We’re friends but we’re mostly benefits, so awhile back we did what adult pals do together- we had a play date. He came over. Our friendship at that point was based on the logistics surrounding the benefits, where we gave each other directions, a brief hug of hello, a little bit of chit-chat. (How’s work? Congrats! […]

Categories: C.A. Aiken, Story Club North Side

Confronting Pete | Dennis Frymire

October 14, 2015 by atatnall

It’s impossible to feel like a badass in a turquoise Ford Tempo. That’s unfortunate, because right now, I need to feel like a badass. I need to feel like a tough guy. I need to feel like the baddest motherfucker in White County, Illinois as I’m driving to do maybe the bravest thing I’ve done in my 16 years: tell a grown man to keep his hands off my girlfriend. *** That morning started like most other mornings my junior […]

Categories: Dennis Frymire, Story Club North Side

How To Wear It | Maya Marshall

October 7, 2015 by atatnall

How To Wear It was read as part of Miss Spoken’s November 2014 show, Body Hair. You can find Maya at 20:33. When I was 20, I had a friend who I would sleep with. He had an idea of how women were supposed to be sexy: shaved cunts, expensive lingerie, long, silky hair, white skin, and I had an idea that I was sexual but not sexy. He moved to Missouri, and I decided to take a cross-country road trip to […]

Categories: Maya Marshall, Miss Spoken

Story Club Magazine

A magazine for nonfiction performance.

Author Archives: atatnall