Field Notes

Sadly, I think my biggest fear had something to do with stigma.  I still did not completely trust myself or my own experience because I’ve lived with a diagnosis, labels, and generalized hurt for so long.

All the sacrifices he had made to earn invitations to reputable artist colonies abroad, only to be rejected by a consular officer with glee. Nkiacha took the embassies’ collective declaration of his unfitness for travel as a writer and poured all his resilience into it.

“A day will come, when, in the eye of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whiskey, or any other of the necessaries of life.” — Mark Twain  Bubbling to the surface on New Year’s Eve 2019 was the nostalgic promise of a second wave of the Roaring Twenties, a decade defined by […]

Nick and I met in December of 2014 at a holiday party in Lawrence, Kansas. I had just graduated from university and my immediate mission was finding a source of income while keeping my hopes alive of becoming a writer. In the beginning of our collaboration and friendship, we both found common ground in that […]

What’s the difference, if there are any, between a war and a pandemic? Both are fatal, both allow fear to fester in our bodies, and both prevent us from carrying on with our lives until we somehow get used to it. I’ve experienced both, no break in between to heal the wounds of the war, now with constant fear of illness residing in my body.

Winners Selected by judges Carmen Maria Machado, Leslie Jamison, Ada Limón, & Meg Lionel Murphy Fiction: Lady Sings by Mant Bares Nonfiction: To Be Loved by Chloe Vassot Poetry: Cricket Noon by Tennessee Hill Visual Art: Tapadas, Saints and Other Heroines by Kathy Bruce Fiction Finalists Black Girl Inside Outpatient by Maya Pearson Coronation by […]

Caught up in the everyday dread and surreality of life in quarantine, it can be hard to remember the beauty of our past lives or the small joys the world has to offer in the strangest, most idiosyncratic ways.

In the name of productivity during social distancing, Porter House Review is republishing Matt Bell’s first exercise from his Writing Exercise Newsletter, which is based on a sentence from Carmen Maria Machado’s story, “The Husband Stitch.”