The wheel of fortune is one of the most well-known images of fate. This wheel spins randomly, setting the course of destiny for the people and events it controls. Northern Arizona University graduate and Thin Air founder Todd Robert Petersen’s It Needs to Look Like We Tried takes the idea of the wheel of fortune … More An Interview with Todd Robert Petersen
We are thrilled to announce Sarah Minor’s (read her recent interview here) picks for our new Gas Station Prize. For the inaugural contest, we asked people to send us hybrid work, or work that didn’t fall neatly into one genre or another. Below are the first-, second-, and third-place winners, with some of Sarah’s thoughts on each piece. … More 2018 Gas Station Winners
We were visited a couple of weeks ago by the celebrated writer and essayist, Sarah Minor, who shared with us her experiences working with texts that are not always only two-dimensional. Sarah Minor is the author of The Persistence of The Bonyleg: Annotated and the video editor at TriQuarterly Review. Her website, sarahceniaminor.com, showcases her many and … More Sarah Minor’s Thoughts on Essaying, Hybrid Texts, and Sheep
The Gas Station Prize is Thin Air Magazine’s Inaugural Hybrid Contest … More The Gas Station Prize
Recipient of the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015), Ross Gay shapes language, roots fused with variegated ash, to chronicle experiences, the profane crafted sacred through simple gestures of doing and undoing, buttoning and unbuttoning, while resisting the need to dissect his artistry with “an X-Acto knife.” When asked what … More Lovingly Grateful: An Interview with Ross Gay; Interview conducted by Laine Derr
I was honored when Carl Phillips, Department of English at Washington University in St. Louis, agreed to an interview. He is a prolific author whose most recent collection Reconnaissance (2015) continues to establish him as a leading poetic voice. When asked what advice he would give to someone new to writing, Phillips succinctly responded, “Read … More A Gesture of Love: An Interview with Carl Phillips; Interview conducted by Laine Derr
Northern Arizona University is located on an island of blue in an ocean of red in the state of Arizona¹. Since November 8, 2016, this island has felt much smaller to me. The day after the election I was walking to teach my 9:10 AM composition class, when I saw, for the first time on … More The Spectrum of Safety in Trumpland, by Katy Sperry
Recently my university got national spotlight because an alt right (read: nazi) website posted an article about a professor deducting a single point from a student’s essay for using the word “mankind” twice. A faculty member of the English department is being sent threats of death and rape for enforcing MLA language guidelines. The students’ … More Humankind v. Mankind: Freedom of Speech and Classroom Policies, by Katy Sperry
The three-wattled bellbird has a call audible to humans up to half a mile away; it lives primarily in Central America, and from the base of its beak protrude three long worm-like tendrils. Most, if given the choice, do not surround themselves with three-wattled bellbirds in part because they are very secretive, and in part, … More Loud People Visiting Schools and a Brief Discussion of Birds, by Justin Kanzler
When the March for Science happened in Flagstaff two Saturdays ago, I was not there. I wasn’t one of the local Science advocates parading down the street, banging on a drum, and shouting generally pro-Science things at the top of their voices. I wasn’t there, partially because I was at the Thin Air community writing … More The March for Science; by Jeanne Mack
