Hartley Lin The time finally has come for Taddle Creek to say farewell. After fifty issues and a beautiful hardcover book, what’s left, really? This Web site will remain online until such a time that it requires an expensive upgrade, as there’s no way left to pay for such things. Here, you can read every story from every issue, in convenient Web page format, or less convenient PDF. You can find information on other ways to read Taddle Creek elsewhere on this site. Taddle Creek launched as a print-only magazine in 1997. At the time, it wasn’t so absurd to think that a small magazine had no use ..read more

At the restaurant we sit as if for the first time sitting  together, considering the other across a table,  across years. On the TV, the Road Runner theme song  plays, but only you turn to catch a whirlwind of  T.N.T. smoke, the scraps of coyote, the remnants of a lesson never learned before the owner’s son flips  the channel and you must turn back to us as if for  the first time. The owner in the apron laughs, points a pencil at the glaring screen, its residual static, that song still vibrating, reminding us “That coyote is  really a crazy clown,” as I try t ..read more

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The youngest screams every night. Every night, they are molten rage and you are cold because you don’t wear pants to bed  and their room is the furthest from the furnace. And you wish you were your mom because she always had a robe on in the middle of the night, and she always knew what to do,  and you never know what to do and you don’t even own a robe. And they are screaming, and now they are is throwing things— dogs and birds and cats fly through the air and collide with the wall, the IKEA dresser that is covered in stickers, the bed they refuse to sleep in. Instead, they have mad ..read more

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Matthew Daley Esmy and I sit in a coffee shop. A few blocks away our mother lies in a hospital room, waiting to die. Esmy sings softly. I stare into my latte and think, “Isn’t it funny how arms get so tangled?” Despite everything that is happening with our mother, I keep recalling the time my ex-boyfriend said that. We were trying to find a comfortable position while lying naked on an unmade bed. I thought about his comment then said, “It is. It’s funny.”  It’s not just funny that arms get so tangled, it’s true. It is true. It must happen to everyone. Awkward things in beautiful moments ..read more

Taddle Creek does not exactly have a large stash of unpublished work sitting around. This proposed cover for Taddle Creek No. 31, by the cartoonist Cole Closser, is a notable exception. The magazine is pleased to be able to present it here for the first time.  ..read more

Alfred Wolfsohn will tell her that “art is bound up  with self love.”                       But they haven’t met yet.  In 1936  Berlin  institutes of higher learning are all but closed to Jews  and Lotte is a Jew.                  Furthermore, she’s thought to have no great  artistic gift.  Ironic then she should have thought:                                “Perhaps I could lea ..read more

Comic by Steve Manale ..read more

Would you please sing to me of that pretty place, Johnny Cash? With green, green grass, terrible beauty, and memories of Jackson, Where I gave my love to Brian Boru, and you gave yours to Rose. Because I’m not convinced this world is for me, With its dreary days, concrete parks, and young boys with rifles, so Would you please sing to me of that pretty place, Johnny Cash? On our way there, you’ll wear your heart like a guitar strap, Low slung, on a dusty trail, exposed but safe, just here, Where I gave my love to Brian Boru, and you gave yours to Rose. And if I beg, plead, borrow, loot, lie, an ..read more