Stories

400 Words content. True personal stories that might or might not also appear in the print magazine.

Mary, Olympia

Posted to Stories on the topic of Autobiographies on 7 April 2008, with 2 comments so far.

From 400 Words, Issue 1
by Mary—Age 46—Olympia, WA
I was born into a sad person’s middle class white home of angry people and miserable immigrant grandparents who loved me more than my own weird mother did. Always a feminist before I could clearly say the letter ‘f,’ I started seriously writing in second grade when the […]

Annabel, Edinburgh

Posted to Stories on the topic of Autobiographies on 5 April 2008, with no comments so far.

by Annabel—Age 24—Edinburgh, Scotland
Mom was a conceptual artist and Dad a drummer in punk bands. Once he played a gig dressed only in boxers and tinfoil, which fell off as he played. He stopped playing when I was two, and started taking me to social work school with him on the Green Line. Mom stopped […]

Derek, Portland

Posted to Stories on the topic of Autobiographies on 3 April 2008, with no comments so far.

From 400 Words, Issue 1
by Derek—Age 33—Portland, OR

I now reside in Portland, Oregon. I arrived here two years ago in a beat-up truck with everything I owned crammed into the bed and cab. I was fleeing Lee’s Summit, Missouri, where I had worked for a shady sub-contractor for the Justice Department—blowing the whistle led […]

Flux

Posted to Stories on the topic of Work on 11 November 2007, with 7 comments so far.

by Erin—Age 30—Saskatoon, Canada
Each day is quite different from the last. I am a mother. I am a grad student. My work, however, can scarcely be summed by such labels.
When I was five, my parents decided to go to grad school. In the five years that followed I was very much on my own, save […]