Yes, They're Real: A Collection of Creative Nonfiction

By Travis Wildes

Yes, They’re Real is a series of creative nonfiction from writers in Northeast Florida. The four included works penned by Sarah Block, Michael Selvester, Travis Wildes and Andrew Wilkins are forever linked by each author’s perspective of what the genre can resemble. Featuring the shorts Green and White, Intervention, Mind the Gap, and Mel’s Hole. Experience the stories and answer the question, “Are they?”

• Language: English
• Publisher: League Press
• Release date: Jul 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476396132

Book preview

Yes, They’re Real

A Collection of

Creative Nonfiction

written by

SARAH BLOCK, MICHAEL SELVESTER,

TRAVIS WILDES and ANDREW WILKINS

faculty advisor at unf

MARK ARI

edited by

TRAVIS WILDES

Volume I, eBook, July 2012

Smashwords Edition

crwleague.wordpress.com

[e-mail]

All stories used by permission

Cover and eBook design by Travis Wildes

Copyright © 2010-2012 League Press. All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher or the authors except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

We wish to thank our fellow student writers from the Spring Semester workshop, Mark Ari for his enthusiasm and support, and you for reading our stories.

The collected stories were written during the Spring 2010 Semester in the Creative Nonfiction Workshop at the University of North Florida.

The Stories

Green and White by Sarah Block

Intervention by Michael Selvester

Mind the Gap by Travis Wildes

Mel’s Hole by Andrew Wilkins

Green and White

by Sarah Block

The two of us are made from the same ingredients. Are different covers of the same song. Me and Christina, Christina with her peacock-dyed hair, with that enormous energy very small people have. With a smiling mom who doesn’t set a curfew and advises us to tend to our lovers with a warm washcloth after sex, making me blush right up to my eyebrows.

Sometimes, we drink out of a bottle of mango wine and talk about Bukowski in tones many people reserve for prayer. Or we eat ecstasy and do yoga on the patio, our skin rubbed smooth by the grit on the pavement. Or we sit in her garage smoking weed and speculating on which girls’ boyfriends are gay. But tonight, it’s something else.

**

That night, that summer, and for too long after that, it was all about cocaine. All of us unrolling our money to buy school lunch, a little white residue clinging to the curling bills, the lunch lady’s eyes narrowed. Cutting lines on our math textbooks (I never did better on tests).