Jean Ryan5 Comments

The Year Before I Loved You

My deep appreciation to the editors of Crack The Spine literary magazine for publishing my personal essay “The Year Before I Loved You.”

In this piece I reflect on the year immediately following my college graduation, when I was poor and hopeful, new to the city, and looking for my way into the world. Accompanying me during these tender months was a boy I will never forget.

New-Logo-Shadow-Large

“Crack the Spine loves the written word. Some might say we’re in love with the written word.  But that’s just a silly rumor. We publish diverse and sharp literary works, including flash fiction, micro-fiction, poetry, short stories, and creative non-fiction. We don’t care if it’s four words or four thousand words, if it’s charged with artistry, we want to publish it. Given the choice, we will always select madness over method.”

Jean Ryan1 Comment

Alabama For Beginners in bioStories

A big thank you to editor Mark Leichliter for featuring my essay “Alabama For Beginners” in bioStories. This is my fourth appearance in bioStories, and I am honored to be among the many talented contributors.

“bioStories offers word portraits of the people surrounding us in our daily lives, of the strangers we pass on the street unnoticed and of those who have been the most influential and most familiar to us but who remain strangers to others. We feature essays from an eclectic variety of viewpoints and seek out writers of literary excellence. We particularly look for work that offers slices of a life that help the reader imagine the whole of that life, work that demonstrates that ordinary people’s experiences often contain extraordinary moments, visionary ideas, inspirational acts, and examples of success and failure that prove instructive. In short, we believe every life displays moments of grace. bioStories wishes to share pieces of these lives and celebrate them.”