Ethan Seavey is a writer and a student at New York University, studying both memoir and fiction writing. He grew up just outside the city of Chicago. As a child he read constantly, but when he was handed a smartphone, he lost that love for many years. In recent years, he has been making strides to push the phone away and expand his perspective. He has been writing for most of his twenty years. His short stories and poems often focus on his perspective as a gay man who was raised steeped in Catholicism, and they have been published in literary journals in both Illinois and New York. Now, he’s working on his most ambitious project yet: a novel which was dubbed “Queer Gothic” by one of its earliest editors. He likes that phrase quite a lot. Email: eps362 [at] nyu.edu
by Ethan Seavey It’s my last day in Paris, and a liminal one. I have to leave for the airport by 14:00 to retrieve my suitcases from my friend. […] I intended to write several sentences before writing the climax of this short piece—that I wish France would say goodbye to me, that someone French…
by Ethan Seavey The dandelion is thousands of miles from home. It has been in America learning about the world beyond and perhaps it wants to return. It has lived thousands of sad lives. Finally after 300 years, a seed clings to an old man’s jacket as he boards a plane, and happens to land…
by Ethan Seavey Every hour of every day I hear the pulsating rush of le Periph and I am reminded that Paris is dead. My dorm is at the very bottom of Paris such that if the city were a ball I’d be the spot that hits the ground. I sit in my windowsill. I…
by Ethan Seavey I used to sit in class with songs in my head, loud enough to feel their beat in my fingertips. I used to blare Adele instead of listening to my teacher. I would sing voicelessly with Hozier while my classmates read a paragraph out loud. Passenger, P!nk, The Lumineers, Steven Sondheim. Billie…
by Ethan Seavey Why do I have to help? Because I can’t just watch from inside the house any longer. Because the sun is setting behind grey clouds during a Chicago winter. Because you can’t recognize how dark it is getting until the streetlights switch on all at once. Because you don’t realize how cold…
by Ethan Seavey I haven’t had a moment for words in weeks. I’ve been drowning myself in the minutia that sums into minutes. I take a nap. 30 second videos and 30 minute episodes on a screen my eyes strain to see. I spend half an hour making food and another eating it. I feel…
by Ethan Seavey On the Praza do Obradoira a young man falls to his knees and cries into his palms. I feel the sharp corners of the rocks dig into his aching knees. He can’t be older than 30 and at the sight of him I feel infantilized, because I am immature in passion and…
by Ethan Seavey The door to the lounge is heavy. Six students enter and sit on large bean bags and a small couch and two cots. They laugh as someone struggles to connect their computer to the television. Behind or between them is a plate with writing in Hebrew, directing attention to the metal door…
by Ethan Seavey On the Métro a man reads an ancient book. He cares for it greatly and flips each page with an abundance of caution. You know that it is ancient because the incredibly thin sides of each page have been painted an antique green and the page that he is reading is yellowed…
by Ethan Seavey I sit in Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in this the 19th and penultimate arrondissement. We are a pocket of American students lounging down by the perfectly circular pond. We rehash old jokes in unapologetic English which go unheard by the hundreds of Parisians sitting on the hill like Greek citizens watching lesser and…
by Ethan Seavey You know this feeling. The formation of words to open the conversation, the gravity of this dull walk with your father. The deals you make with the devil inside yourself: tell him by the time you reach the end of this street, the middle of this bridge, and definitely before you reach…
by Ethan Seavey When I was a young boy of Midwestern Suburbia, I plucked a bouquet of dandelions. The flowers were so vibrant, approaching the color of the crayon I’d always use for the sun. I gave them a cup to live in and water to drink; and they were the sun wilting indoors. They…
by Ethan Seavey The end of the pandemic is far from near. The end of the American epidemic is far from near, too, but for those of us who made the decision to get one of three miracle vaccines, our COVID story is slowly wrapping up. The COVID world was lonely, hidden, distrustful, terrifying, and…