Personal Essays

Ash Sanders Ash Sanders

Bodies of Water

It was the summer of Nancy Drew–the year I finished the last of Carolyn Keene’s seventy-eight mysteries at the library by my house and, enthralled, started again on the first one.

Published in Two Cities Review, Issue 15

Winner, Honorable Mention, Glimmer Train's Fiction Open 2017

It was the summer of Nancy Drew–the year I finished the last of Carolyn Keene’s seventy-eight mysteries at the library by my house and, enthralled, started again on the first one. School had been out for a month by then, and the heat came down like an omen, flat and hard on our bodies. My father had a name for this weather; he called it July’s Murder. I liked this because it sounded Nancy Drew, and it worded the world exactly: the grass curling with exhaustion, the sidewalks belly-up with sun by early morning, crying: uncle! uncle!

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Ash Sanders Ash Sanders

Rising Inaction (Hobart)

It’s Saturday night, and I am cleaning the kitchen because it’s easier than cleaning up my life; I am putting away dishes because I know where dishes go. I do not know where to put other things: relationships.

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Ash Sanders Ash Sanders

The Most Popular Person You Know Is Also Lonely

In this article for Oprah Daily: a fake funeral, an OCD support group and a party girl's confrontation with the slow creep of loneliness.

In this article for Oprah Daily: a fake funeral, an OCD support group and a party girl's confrontation with the slow creep of loneliness.

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Ash Sanders Ash Sanders

Hell Hath No Fury

Pregnancy, abandonment, and the loneliness of anger. Oh, and some effigies and vengeance goddesses.

Pregnancy, abandonment, and the loneliness of anger. Oh, and some effigies and vengeance goddesses.

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Ash Sanders Ash Sanders

The World As It Is

A search for a vanished desert artifact, a very long walk on the shores of an ancient sea, and a reckoning with personal loss in a rapidly unraveling world.

A search for a vanished desert artifact, a very long walk on the shores of an ancient sea, and a reckoning with personal loss in a rapidly unraveling world.

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