Nonfiction

This is Thin Air Online’s Archive of pieces that are classified as nonfiction. We accept work from those associated with Flagstaff and those from far off.

  • Several Indisputable Claims and Why I Fear Chainsaws Simulated; by Jessica Kanzler

    Simulated Reality Theory argues that the universe is actually a simulation created by a computer with powers far beyond our comprehension. That means everything–including the interdimensional loose change that lives in every couch simultaneously–is actually a few imperceptible lines of code for us to blithely accept and complain about. A foundational argument for the possible…

  • “10-4” or “Things I Learned about Cops on my Civilian Ride Along”

    “10-4” or “Things I Learned about Cops on my Civilian Ride Along”

    by Camille Sinaguinan When I told an officer of the Flagstaff Police Department last December that I was a writer, and that I was always looking for story, he suggested that I go on a ride along.  I wasn’t sold on the idea at first–couldn’t you get shot at on ride alongs?–but when I mentioned…

  • The Reason I Read: Or Seven Synchronicities I’ve Had With Books Lately by Elizabeth Hellstern

    The Reason I Read: Or Seven Synchronicities I’ve Had With Books Lately by Elizabeth Hellstern

    The Reason I Read: Or Seven Synchronicities I’ve Had With Books Lately by Elizabeth Hellstern Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity, saying that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship, yet seem to be related. For me, synchronicities mean that I’m on the right path. They give validation to my muses, to…

  • Grayscale by Brian Burmeister

    Grayscale by Brian Burmeister

    GRAYSCALE by Brian Burmeister A month after Mom passed, I went back to the house to pack up. In the corner of her closet, buried under a pile of blankets, was a box within a box. Inside were dozens of aged, black-and-white photos of my mother with a man I didn’t know. There were no…

  • Night Noise by Emma Moser

    Night Noise by Emma Moser

    Night Noise by Emma Moser The pattern of your breathing changes, and that is how I know we both heard it, that we are both stirring from a different darkness than the one which embraced us, hours ago, as we embraced, fading into sleep, and that the velvet of conversing breaths has been violated by something…

  • BIRD BY DESERT-LIGHT by Chelsea Biondolillo

    BY CHELSEA BIONDOLILLO   …It can’t store enough fuel to last the night and hoist it from its well of dreams to first light trembling on wet fuchsia, nor break the hard promise life always keeps. A lot of hummingbirds die in their sleep.   —Diane Ackerman, Dark Night of the Hummingbird     Creeping…

  • PRESENCE by Bill Vernon

    BY BILL VERNON   I’m not even fishing, just standing on the bank of the Little Miami River, and the flowing seems to pour through me. It’s as if the future lies downstream and all I have to do is look there to see it. My eyes are like spools from which the lines of…