Porter House Review | Online Literary Journal

FEATURED

Fiction,

Ways of Looking at a Ghost Town: On Julian Mithra’s Unearthingly

"When you finally reopen your eyes, the strobe lights have been replaced by soft overhead lighting and a maelstrom whirls on the dance floor – faces suspended in expressions of exhilaration that will only last until the bar closes. You see a familiar form moving among them. You let that thought go, sure it is a negroni-induced mirage. But you notice the way it taps its foot against the floor. Slowly. Out of time with the music."

- From "Purple" by Kinjal Sheth

FIELD NOTES

An automobile graveyard. The car in the foreground is missing one of its front doors.

Field Notes,

Let’s Not Be Obsessed with Speed, Okay?

BY Ciera Horton McElroy

I have no doubt that some artists really do create spontaneously. That is not me. And that is not most writers I know.

Digital abstract art with red, yellow, and orange splotches superimposed over a blue background.

Field Notes,

Is the Narrator Nothing or Everything?

BY Véronique Darwin

I didn’t come to writing school to pursue a topic, but to pursue writing, as a craft. From one sentence, I wanted to build the next. I came here to dress myself up in literature. If words were my bones, their cadence my muscle, my body’s movement would be voice, pure voice (okay, my voice).

Image of a flowering plant against blue sky

Field Notes,

Creation is the Point: Overcoming Comparison and Inadequacy as Writers

BY Melissa Huckabay

The imposter syndrome, the fear of failure, the fear of rejection stopped me before I even started. Escaping was easier, and perhaps it’s necessary for a while. Sooner or later, though, every writer must decide—if not now, when will I write?

“I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.”

—Naomi Shihab Nye, PHR Advising Editor

FEATURED

Poetry,

Sepia-toned image of several white flowers in a vase.

Totem

BY Kryston Lopez

so that I may take it in, / taste our communion / and learn what she means when she says / Mija, we are magic.

Fiction,

A red-toned image of a woman's head and shoulders, exposed in such a way that there appear to be two of her.

Sillage

BY Tanya Žilinskas

People wanted to be debased. They wanted to debase others, their scent lingering as they walked by.

Interviews,

A collage of Tea Obreht book covers in various translations

On Roving, Writing, Reading, Teaching, and Navigating Worlds: Nkiacha Atemnkeng Interviews Téa Obreht

BY Nkiacha Atemnkeng

Wandering appeals to me enormously. I find it to be regenerative and creatively enriching. Like everything, however, it has its downsides. Belonging somewhere takes time. Forming a community takes time. Wandering can make you an outsider to certain kinds of knowledge—which can be tricky for writing. A lot of my work tends to focus on displaced people, or passers-through, people trying to make sense of settings to which they are fundamentally outsiders, and I suspect this is tied to my own experience of the world.

Reviews,

The Smoke is Me, Burning: C.A. Blintzios Sets Fire to Trauma and Dances Around the Flames

BY Bryce Jeter

Blintzios’s enviable economy of language conjures an utterly heart-stopping, breathtaking sensation discovered in the rarest of reading experiences.

FEATURED

Purple

Get My Body Back

Ways of Looking at a Ghost Town: On Julian Mithra’s Unearthingly

FIELD NOTES

Let’s Not Be Obsessed with Speed, Okay?

Is the Narrator Nothing or Everything?

Creation is the Point: Overcoming Comparison and Inadequacy as Writers

“I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.”

FEATURED

Totem

Sillage

On Roving, Writing, Reading, Teaching, and Navigating Worlds: Nkiacha Atemnkeng Interviews Téa Obreht

The Smoke is Me, Burning: C.A. Blintzios Sets Fire to Trauma and Dances Around the Flames