Rarely can you say with a shard of truth that you remember the first time a writer’s work hit you in the head and the heart with a nearly audible slap, but I remember the first time I read a passage from Ana Maria Spagna.
When I encounter Claire Watkins’s place-based prose, I’m reminded of the first photograph I ever saw of a nuclear detonation crater. The image, shot at the Nevada Test Site, is disturbingly aesthetic.