Ben Lewellyn-Taylor

Oct 3, 2024 | chireviewofbooks.com | Ben Lewellyn-Taylor

Peculiar as a family’s traditions may seem to an outsider, they run the risk of becoming rote—if still hallowed—to those who maintain them. In Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife, the Haddlesley siblings live by a simple pact that rules their days: in exchange for their maintenance of the bog where they reside, it will produce a wife for their patriarch. But when the ritual that has apparently sustained them for generations fails, the five siblings don’t know how to proceed with their lives.

Sep 25, 2024 | theadroitjournal.org | Ben Lewellyn-Taylor

Charles lives across the river from his daughter, watching her grow up from a distance. Elizabeth is unaware that the man on the other side is her father, if she’s even aware of him at all. Years before, when Mary became pregnant with Elizabeth, she made the decision to leave Charles behind. Because Charles is not of Penobscot descent, and therefore not allowed to live on Maine’s Penobscot Nation, this is the only way to ensure that Elizabeth can grow up Penobscot.

Sep 9, 2024 | memoirland.substack.com | Timothy Caulfield |Ben Lewellyn-Taylor |Sarah Orman |J. Bonanni

Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by Sari Botton, now featuring four verticals:Memoir Monday, a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus,  Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, The Walrus, and Electric Literature. Below is this week’s curation. First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “Chasing Drinks with Lies, and Lies with Drinks,” by .

Sep 3, 2024 | therumpus.net | Ben Lewellyn-Taylor

Inside the gymnasium of a neighboring elementary school, six white men greeted me and a small group of other district teachers from midcourt. In front of us, a projector screen displayed a PowerPoint presentation titled “Safety Awareness Training.” We’d been brought together from various schools to make sure we received the latest on how to respond in an active shooter situation.

May 26, 2023 | chireviewofbooks.com | Ben Lewellyn-Taylor

Brandon Taylor’s new novel, The Late Americans, begins with a character you wouldn’t want to be stuck with in your MFA workshop. Seamus is the only white male student in his graduate poetry seminar, where he doesn’t think anyone’s work is any good, since it’s all tied up in their individual traumas and not grounded in what he believes transforms writing into art. He doesn’t, for the record, think his work is good either, or else he doesn’t think it matters on the grander scale.