“Our present-tense human experience is like a living tree growing by a river. The current in the river is the passing of time. Our individual pasts are like the same tree fallen in the river, drowned now, and disintegrating with surprising speed. We resist time’s flow with our memories and language, with our stories ”   

~ David James Duncan

Issue 25.1

Featuring the writing of Elizabeth Miki Brina, Kit Carlson, Brooke Champagne, Henrietta Goodman, Megan Harlan, Sonya Huber, Laura Johnsrude, Shannon McCarthy, Tierney Oberhammer, Jon Parrish Peede, and Justin St. Germain.

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Two koi fish swimming in dark water

River Teeth is a biannual journal combining the best of creative nonfiction, including narrative reportage, essays, and memoir, with critical essays that explore the impact of nonfiction narrative on the lives of its writers, subjects, and readers.

River Teeth Finds a New Home!

After twenty years at Ashland University in Ohio, River Teeth will now be housed in the Department of English at Ball State University.

 

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Beautiful Things

River Teeth‘s weekly online magazine, Beautiful Things, features micro-essays (of 250 words or fewer) that look closely to find beauty and meaning in the everyday.

River Teeth Revisited

Here at River Teeth, we love essays. We love reading essays, choosing essays, and writing essays. We love essays that feel urgent, essays we can’t put down, and essays that don’t turn away when the truth gets difficult or slippery.

We also like to think about how the best essays work—and that’s why we have created the online feature: River Teeth Revisited.

Share with us your River Teeth

River Teeth accept submissions of creative nonfiction through Submittable from September 1 to December 1 and January 1 to May 1.

The Book Prize

River Teeth‘s editors conduct a yearly national contest for a book-length manuscript of literary nonfiction in English. All manuscripts are screened by the co-editors of River Teeth. The contest winner receives $1,000 and publication by The University of New Mexico Press.

Beautiful Things: a weekly online magazine of micro-essays
C-Section
C-Section

C-Section

By Alyssa Lindley Sinclair C- Section; noun; 1) The lights are on bright, the room freezer-cold and strangers wheel you in on a hospital bed, helpless and naked beneath a thin cotton gown, and they stick a needle in your back and you start shaking, from the drugs,...

Latest News …

Sarah Capdeville Wins River Teeth’s 2022 Literary Nonfiction Book Prize

We are delighted to announce that Sarah Capdeville has won the 2022 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize. Her manuscript, Aligning the Glacier's Ghost, will be published by the University of New Mexico Press in spring 2024. Capdeville will also receive a $1,000 honorarium. All entries were screened by the editors and our guest judge, Natasha Trethewey, chose a winner from among the finalists...

Cover of Robert Lunday's Disequilibria

Robert Lunday Wins River Teeth’s 2021 Literary Nonfiction Book Prize

We are delighted to announce that Robert Lunday has won the 2021 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize. Fayettenam: Meditations on Missingness will be published by the University of New Mexico Press in spring 2023. All entries were screened by the editors and our guest judge, Rigoberto González, chose a winner from among the finalists. Everyone at River Teeth is grateful to the many writers who submitted their books to this year’s competition and to Rigoberto González for sharing his time and expertise to choose a winner.