PULLING BACK THE VENEER

In Essays and Fiction

Personal essays provide an opportunity to reflect on the inconsistencies, emotionality, and mysteries of everyday life. Though hard facts and science undergird our experience, there is, too, a mystical layer overriding it all, giving meaning to our experience.

In the realm of stories, speculative fiction and surrealism give us leeway to contemplate our reality. Fiction is a truth and a lie at once. It is the underbelly of our carefully constructed world, showing it as unstable, luminous, and full of things still unknown.

At the intersection of the real and the unreal is a shifting ground. Through lyricism, contemplation, and make-believe, we weave a meaningful, if chaotic, truth. Here, in this disorientation, lives the chance to see the world new and the possibility for growth.

Harli James is a writer living in Western North Carolina. She has had essays stories published in a variety of literary magazines. Harli is married and has three daughters, two dogs, and one cat. When not working she is obsessively revising, reading broadly, listening to podcasts, running, biking, and sitting on her front porch.