Rough Copy
The online magazine for creative writing, short stories and artistic expression.Category: Non-fiction
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Stocky Legs and All
Until today, I have always worn my legs hairy by principle, despite the coarse, dark pelt that always made me feel more primate than pretty, more grotesque than desirable. But this morning, twelve years after my girl friends began shaving their legs, I was drawn to the curved brown razor my housemate left in the […]
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The Red Coat
When I was eight, my family moved from Albuquerque to El Paso.
An adventure! my mother said. Why, if you want to go to Mexico, you just walk across a bridge, and there you are!
We learned how to count in Spanish, celebrated Christmas, packed the U-Haul, and moved south during the worst snow-storm the area had […] -
Steilacoom
An excerpt from Are You My Son?, a memoir.
The year I got my hands on a book called “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask),” was the same year my mother was admitted to a mental hospital. In my case the book would have been much more aptly titled, […] -
Ten Commandments for the Happy Writer
Writers aren’t generally known as the happiest lot. As a recent Guardian survey of some top writers shows, even the best ones don’t particularly enjoy it all that much. And in case you think this is a new development, an 1842 letter from Edgar Allen Poe to his publisher recently surfaced in which he was found apologizing for […]
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The Red Book
Earlier this fall I began writing a small book about writing to coincide with next year’s 10th anniversary for the Attic Writers’ Workshop. My little red book, as I’ve dubbed it, is more of a pep talk than a How To. It dwells on the kind of attitude a writer needs to stay with it, […]
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Happy Valley
The wind blasted through the open window of our silver Chevelle as my mother launched a high-speed chase through our peaceful suburban Baltimore neighborhood. Other mothers wore platform sandals and carried straw purses. My mother sported steel-toed tactical shoes and packed a .38. Fresh from graduating from the police academy in 1975, she tucked her […]
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Vision
I was not in the original family photo, although you might say I was, since I was growing in Ma’s belly at the time. Khoong-Khoong had decreed that a family picture must be taken and that it could not wait for me, because it must coincide with the grand opening of his second coffee shop.
The […] -
The Horse Dream and the Funeral
Our first mistake was watching back-to-back shows about the paranormal in the old farmhouse while Grammy was dying next door. My next mistake was noticing when Kate asked Jen if she’d ever thought the house was creepy when they were kids. Kate had just put her three year old to bed, and she leaned towards […]
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Fun On the Book Tour!
For the last three months, I’ve been trying to hawk my new novel Q Road in the midwest and beyond, and in case you haven’t read it, recommended it to four friends, suggested your local library purchase it, and demanded your favorite bookstores carry it, shame on you!In these last several months, I have been […]
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My Neighbor Al Used to Play Poker with the Pope’s Dentist
In honor of esteemed novelist Kurt Vonnegut, we asked Liam Callanan to take the late author’s admonishment from A Man Without A Country and “please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”
Good advice!
And here’s Liam’s piece. -
One Instance of Divine Intervention: Saint Christopher the Patron Saint of Both Travelers and Meth Heads
The stigma attached to methamphetamine is well deserved, so I knew there was no way to explain to the Tennessee State Trooper why I had it tucked away behind the passenger seat under a .32 caliber palm pistol loaded with Glazer safety slugs.
It was mid-December of 1997 and my first trip across the country. I […]
by Heather McQueen
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