fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
She was born on a Monday in October. The weekend before had been bright and unseasonably warm and utterly heartbreaking. We carried our grief into the hospital, where our days and nights decomposed into the two-hour cycles of our newborn daughter. Each time a nurse or doctor came into our room, which was often, we strapped [...]
There were six of us in the basement at first. It was a party, so far as a half-dozen high schoolers aimlessly lounging around an adult-free house is a party. The others were drinking vodka sodas; they would haphazardly pour water into the depleted fifth and replace it in the liquor cabinet before we left [...]
A few weeks ago, one of my favorite newsletter writers suggested that they weren't necessarily burnt out, they just didn't want to do much of anything for a while. I guess you could argue that's exactly what burn out feels like but it doesn't really matter what you call it, because the important thing is [...]
For a long time I didn't use any powered tools to maintain my lawn. I channeled my old-timey dad energy every time I used my reel mower, with each swing of my double-bladed grass cutter I turned a little more into a Victorian farmer, and with every inch of sidewalk that I trimmed with the [...]
The stereotype says that athleticism and physicality are reserved for jocks, bullies, and meatheads, and that part of the reason that some people elect to be punks or hipsters or whatever is a lack of physical capacity for sport. And, hey, I get it. I and almost everyone I know are deeply tied to that [...]
One of my favorite places on earth is completely and utterly ordinary and that's okay. Powell's City of Books, located in the heart of Portland, is subdivided into rooms identified by color. In the Blue Room you'll find literature and poetry. Philosophy and self-help are in the Purple Room. Each room, like a dog on [...]
"I did something bad," she said. Inspired by a workplace speaker, Caitlin had been browsing rescue sites before I got home from work. For months we had been talking about getting a dog but we worried that we weren't ready. Now the search had begun and there were three pups pulling on her heartstrings. She [...]
2020 has been a, um, challenging year. There was the massive wildfire that destroyed lives, reshaped entire biospheres and underscored the urgency of addressing climate change at every level, as soon as possible. No, not that wildfire, the other one. There were protests against the racial injustice that is baked into American life, a widespread [...]
Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers introduced me to "Hell You Talmbout," a magnificent piece of social activism by Janelle Monae and Wondaland Records from 2015. The song is primarily a roll call of Black Americans that have been murdered by the police and that it feels even more prescient right now than it did in [...]
This is arguably the most unimportant impact of COVID-19 and yet it's one that seems undeniable and has been on my mind a lot lately: Since the pandemic first shut down my life in mid-March it feels as if time has stopped. It hasn't, of course, as evidenced by the fact that it's now mid-July [...]
Songs & Stories 