Lit Mag Love: Nikki Schulak

My Lit Mag Love posts are all about finding treasures when I immerse myself in the hundreds of literary magazines online.

I submitted a piece to Porcupine Literary, a magazine for and by teachers, but got rejected. It was a warm rejection and that essay eventually found a home with Oh Reader

Nikki Schulak’s wonderful send up about teaching, bodies, and parenting is here: https://www.porcupineliterary.com/post/having-conversations-with-children-about-bodies

From there I traveled to her piece about boys and dentists and cats on Prozac. There are so many good lines in this work, like this paragraph:

Leo’s adult teeth are hard and pretty. But when he was three, I’m ashamed to tell you, his teeth were so rotted, we had to have them fixed under general anesthesia. In 2012, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted an increase, the first in forty years, in the number of preschoolers with cavities, so at least we were trendsetters.

And this:

One night, we were lost in Vancouver, Washington, and hail was pelting the Honda. My husband was driving, and everyone was looking to me to lighten the mood. That was when I invented our most popular family word game ever: the ABC Swearing Game. Teaching your kid to curse makes as much sense, and maybe more sense, than teaching your baby sign language. 

The whole awesome essay is here:

https://creativenonfiction.org/writing/dentistrys-problem-children/

 

Published by Lauren