by Elin Johnson As my time at Turnagain Currents comes to a close, I think back to everything that made my experience special. The musty bat cave with its mismatched chairs and stacks of outdated literature. The partially filled out schedules and all the decisions that ended with “yeah we should get to that…” My poetry enthused counterpart and our fearless editor, creating magic with a few key strokes. Our Canadian faculty advisor always encouraging us to continue writing even when academia had sucked all of our passion out of our souls through bendy straws. This eclectic group of individuals all bound together by our mutual hatred of the sound…

by Elin Johnson Jolene Perry is our amazing writer-in-residence. She grew up in Alaska and still resides in the final frontier with her husband and two kids. Jolene has written for Entangled, Albert Whitman Teen, and Simon Pulse.    Q: When did you first decide to become a writer and how did you go about doing so? A: I always wanted to be a writer, but thought I’d never have any ideas. I laugh about that now because I can’t imagine living long enough to get all my ideas down. I’ve always kept a journal and/or a blog, filling both with personal essays. One day I thought it might be…

by Beth Pipkin It is the rarest kind of awakening from sleep that allows you to gently glide from dreamland back to the physical world with eyes closed, body still and the rest of your senses doing all of the work to remind you of where you are. Once reality is all pieced together in your mind as you lay there, you smile because you remember and crawl out of bed to make sure that it is real. I was seven years old when I discovered paradise. Asleep in my Umma and Uppa’s bed is where it all started, with my dark brown hair cut into a bob, like Mary…

by Elin Johnson When my parents separated my mom got a house full of  whatnot and my dad got our chubby little black lab. At eight, the loss of my four-legged best friend was more heart-wrenching than the family rupture. The presence of my father was limited strictly to weekends which left a dog-sized hole in my chest for the rest of the week. Mother compensated for this by dragging me out to the Butte in response to an ad found buried in the classifieds. We found ourselves on the ranch of an austere horse veterinarian who wouldn’t allow us to pass the driveway without first confirming we would purchase…

by Elbert Joseph While growing up on this mystical island there was never a shortage of things to do and places to go. From one adventure to the next, I spent my childhood exploring the beautifully untamable rainforest of the Nature Isle of the Caribbean. Swimming in many of its 365 rivers and finding secret beaches made growing up on this island  the experience of a lifetime. So, if you want to go on a vacation that is full of adventure and exploration, then you should visit Dominica. The island isn’t like one of those cookie cutter touristy islands with massive hotels and crowded beaches. In quite a contrast from…

by Annie Thorndike When I was growing up, I would go to the beach every summer on the coast of Tillamook County, Oregon. No matter where you went in Tillamook County, there was bound to be an ice cream shop, and homemade waffle cones that smelled like angels’ dreams combined with vanilla scented Yankee candles. This scent flowed through every street for 2 blocks around its source. It felt like home. It touched my sinuses like hands on puppy fur, warm and downy. ***** In New York City, between every blink, breath and step is a sensory cacophony. Mish-mashed and tangled together are the sounds of people’s steps, subways, cabs,…

by Annie Thorndike Almost all of us know someone who has or currently cuts themselves. It’s become so common these days that some people even joke about it; there’s a popular satirical diagram circling the internet reminding kids to “cut down the river, not across the street.” However, it wasn’t always this way. Cutting and self-mutilation, also known as NSSI (non-suicidal self-injury) was not a popular coping method until very recent years. A few decades ago, medical professionals would have likely reacted the same way as Leonard Sax, M.D, who described it as “weird” when he witnessed a case of self-harm in 1985 as a Psychiatry resident. In the early…

by Elin Johnson I sat in the back seat of the The Bug strapped into a booster seat contraption that rivaled the set up of a fighter pilot. I watched the rain drops slide down the windows, racing each other. Mom pointed at the green beast growing up out of the side of the road. “Mt. Juneau. See that?” I nodded my head stoically. “And you see those, where the snow over hangs?” Again, I nodded. “That’s a cornice.” I decided to break my silence with a solemn interrogation into its importance, since it clearly wasn’t a vegetable frequently paired with peas. “Well, you see, they’re dangerous.” Still unclear of…

by Crystal Dalison I recently received a clipping from the Sydney Morning Herald in the mail. It reported on a study of the Australian brushtail possum population. A rare genetic disease that had previously been found only in Tasmanian possums had suddenly begun to appear within the populations of 5 of Australia’s 6 mainland states. Scientists were attempting to discern whether the gene which carried the disease had mutated independently in all of these regions, which is highly unlikely, or if a number of Tasmanian possums had successfully stowed away on ships bound for various ports. Much to my chagrin, I may be able to provide an explanation for this.…

by Crystal Dalison They found his body hanging in a storage shed behind the general store. He had been there for six months. One day, in mid-August, he had told us that he was going to leave his seasonal job early and go home, and then, two weeks later, he was gone. He worked at the shop, and had been helping to get everything stored away for winter, so he knew which sheds wouldn’t be opened until spring. It got cold early that year, which slowed his decomposition and kept the smell from giving away his hiding spot. For six months, no one looked for him, no one filed a…