-WRITER-
ERIC ROE
Latest Publication:
"The Line"
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My latest packing plant story, "The Line," has been published by The Lemonwood Quarterly, a new online literary journal. This is the most recent packing plant story I've written, and when I finished, it felt like maybe the final packing plant story -- it had a sense of closure that the other stories, by necessity, had lacked. The original idea -- to focus on a female production worker going through a divorce -- came to me back in 2008, but I didn't start writing it until 2021, and it took me almost exactly a year to reach a clean final draft. In the fragmented approach, moving back and forth over a wide swath of time, and in the point of view, this story's different from the other packing plant stories I've had published so far, and I'm honored and grateful to have it appear in The Lemonwood Quarterly.
It was difficult for Gayle to separate what she actually remembered of the tour from what she later saw every day walking through the same halls for work. She remembered DANGER signs everywhere, because she could remember pointing them out, one after another, and asking the tour guide why it was such a dangerous place to work. The guide said cheerfully, “It is just the nature of this particular beast.”
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--from "The Line"
