Seth Sawyers has had creative nonfiction published in the Baltimore Sun, The Millions, River Teeth, the Baltimore Review, Fourth Genre, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, Fugue, and elsewhere. An essay about seeing a Vanilla Ice concert is forthcoming at The Rumpus. He has recently finished a memoir, called The Skinny Part, about growing up in the Maryland Appalachians in the 1980s. He is a former Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Penn State Altoona and winner of the Writers@Work nonfiction competition. He has an MFA from Old Dominion University and teaches writing classes at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
The thing you’ve come to Sevilla to see is the ritualized killing of bulls. What you also see: ancient architecture, handsome crowds, enormous animals, glittering suits, red capes, long swords, tradition.
After a childhood in the country, awaking as a freshman in a college town, where the inhabitants are willing and strange.
In western Maryland, where the state’s already skinny, being a stutterer who can’t eat doesn’t help growing up. Paying tribute to 1980s Appalachia, home to American chariots.