Philip Canterbury
Bio
Storyteller and published historian crafting fiction and nonfiction.
2022 Vocal+ Fiction Awards Finalist [Chaos Along the Arroyo].
Top Story - October 2023 [All the Colorful Wildflowers].
Stories (24/0)
- Runner-Up in Get Comfortable Challenge
The 'Violet Protest' Was An Art Campaign We Needed – Even If Its Audience Hasn't Yet Responded
Thanatophobia: fear of death or dying. Athazagoraphobia: fear of being forgotten or forgetting something. Disposophobia: fear of losing something. Three terms I recently learned. Three terms that have likely crept up behind each of us over the past two years. On some level, most have had to reckon with thanatophobia. Many have felt afraid of forgetting to wash our hands, or not touching our face, or socially distancing. Most of all, perhaps, the fear of losing something precious (and perhaps it's not even a thing)—community, connection, sovereign democratic liberty Herself—has been staring down every American for years now. Each unfolding news cycle brings us ever closer to that final back-breaking hay straw. “This…” we’ve each likely said aloud at some point since January 2020 (whether hyperbolically or in earnest), “...this is what’s going to finally upend the country forever.” With different experiences of the pandemic, the rallies for social justice, and the election fallout—even different truths about them—each of us has been compelled to reckon with a fear of losing America (or integral parts of Her). Sadly, this fear might be one of the strongest unifying factors in our present condition as a country.
By Philip Canterbury2 years ago in Humans
In Defense of Those Suffering with Sleep 'Problems'
I recently underwent a sleep study. This was one of the more fascinating nights I’ve spent in my lifetime. The Alhambra sleep clinic was in an unassuming corporate tower across from the Costco I visit monthly with my girlfriend. For some reason, the upper-floor suite in a corporate building was not what I’d envisioned. Finding the correct apartment, I entered expecting to hear beeping tones and to see panels of flashing lights, monitors, and a team of technicians conferring over results or charts. Instead, I found a more or less disheveled work desk with too many file folders crowding a single computer. An open supply closet revealed sheets, blankets, cleaning supplies, and plastic tubs filled with indiscernible equipment. A single technician was visible down a hallway attending to another client in one of the study rooms and I was instructed to take a seat until the tech was ready to get me prepped for the study.
By Philip Canterbury2 years ago in Lifehack
Wild Pickings Up the Holler
Paint on our farmhouse screen door chips off in desiccated white blocks against pale brown wood beneath. Fine mesh screen bubbles loosely in the frame. I push and the door swings easily, even though I’m so small. There’s a yawning creak as the spring expands, then a fast-winding screech and multi-layer smacking as the door shuts behind me. I carry an empty water pail by its metal handle and savor the feel of the shifting momentum swinging with my steps. My brother wears a backpack and holds a white-speckled blue stockpot. His hair is impossibly blonde from all the summer sun. Our sister is inside nursing a head wound from an incident in the barn yesterday, so it’s just us two today.
By Philip Canterbury2 years ago in Families
Numismatica
It was ugly and yet still sparkled along the edge just beneath Lincoln's chest. He had nearly passed it before lurching to a halt. His feet moved so much slower these days yet his mind was still sharp enough to know a good thing when he saw it, even covered over with wear and stain, grit and scars. It looked well-traveled. He bent down and slipped his fingernail beneath its slick, familiar face, pressed it beneath his thumb, and picked it up. He leaned close to examine it, found he needed his lenses, and removed them from his coat pocket.
By Philip Canterbury3 years ago in Fiction
Five Reasons Scud is Your New Favorite Comic that You Never Heard About
From the vaults of the mid-’90s, Rob Schrab’s limited comic series, Scud: The Disposable Assassin, is a clear example of a masterful story that has flown for too long below the public radar. This surreal hired gun comic is a solid gold hidden gem that everyone should revisit. Here’s what dedicated believers in the Scud underground want you to know about this touching, comedic, blood-soaked adventure.
By Philip Canterbury3 years ago in Geeks
Sleeping Beauties, Vol. One - Review
Capitalizing on a wide array of prior successes, author Rio Youers and artist Alison Sampson have adapted Stephen and Owen King’s 700-page novel Sleeping Beauties into a ten-issue comic series released by IDW Publishing. Alison Sampson has created artwork for comic projects including Hit Girl, Winnebago Graveyard, and Jessica Jones, while Rio Youers has authored a handful of well-received thriller/horror novels, including The Forgotten Girl and Halcyon, as well as a trove of novellas and short stories. In Sleeping Beauties, Youers and Sampson combine strengths to deliver a surreal version of the father/son King duo’s apocalyptic tale about a town in West Virginia tearing itself apart as a mysterious sleeping sickness, dubbed Aurora, targets the world’s female population. While the series debuted in June 2020, IDW released a hardcover graphic novel in April of this year that collects issues one through five, allowing readers to experience the first half of the series in one volume.
By Philip Canterbury3 years ago in Horror
Y: The Last Man Series - Review
After receiving critical acclaim and multiple awards, Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s sixty-issue Vertigo Comics series, Y: The Last Man, spent years in film development under New Line Cinema, one of Vertigo’s sister companies, until the project dissolved in 2014. Now, almost twenty years after its comic debut, FX Productions and Color Force have released the first five episodes of their television adaptation of the post-apocalyptic story. So continues the strange tale of Yorick Brown and his Capuchin monkey Ampersand who together struggle anew to survive through a global mass-androcide event, albeit in an updated medium. It is laudable and fitting to note that FX contracted a largely female writing staff to adapt the comic series along with its creators, and that the showrunner is Eliza Clark, a woman with heavy writing and production credits behind her name. While remaining largely true (thus far) to the structure of the original comic series, Y: The Last Man promises to be as shocking and enthralling in its tv series format as it was on comic pages.
By Philip Canterbury3 years ago in Geeks
An Accidental Weaver
My Mother’s Son: I grew up playing with all the tools my mother had acquired over her years of practice. Throughout my college years, the woman I dated performed its rituals. At age twenty-eight, I took a two-day beginner’s class from a master. I became a guild member on the fifth of January, 2021, just before I turned thirty-eight. Seven days later, I stood outside an over-filled storage unit in Van Nuys writing out a paper check as exiting cars squeezed past me and my new machine.
By Philip Canterbury3 years ago in Humans
The Shineman’s Magical Diary
**This essay contains spoilers of Matt de la Peañ's The Living and The Hunted book series. It’s a wild thing to see that post-apocalyptic stories have become so popular that there’s now a thriving Young Adult sub-genre sitting next to bone-chilling classics like I Am Legend, The Road, or Cat’s Cradle. As if kids weren’t already over-anxious, authors are now running them through dystopian futurism. A world in which humans have been thrown again into a state of nature is something that, turns out, appeals to teens and tweens as well as to adults. Enter Matt de la Peña and his Y.A. take on the American apocalypse in The Living and The Hunted. This series brings wealth inequalities, political access, and racial privilege front and center to the modern disaster/survival story. “Shy” works a summer gig for an LA cruise line, and as things fall apart (due to a multi-pronged catastrophe featuring earthquakes, fires, tsunami tidal waves, and an emerging, high-mortality pandemic disease outbreak) he comes to rely on a select band of surviving co-workers. “Shoeshine” holds a mysterious, stoic, and at times mythical role in Shy’s band of travelers. Despite some glaring indications that Shoeshine is a real person in this story, it also becomes possible that Shoeshine exists not as an actual character, and only as a fragment of Shy’s consciousness. Shoeshine is a projection of Shy’s representing everything that Shy “cannot” do yet, or does not yet have the will to express.
By Philip Canterbury3 years ago in Futurism
Where I Was the Day the Students Turned
I was leaving my Zumba at the Park class when some teenagers ran laughing up the stairs to the footbridge over the Arroyo Freeway. Each of them cradled a big rock like a baby. It was weird— them being there and not in school— so I kept watching. I thought they would cross to the parks on the other side of the Freeway and the Arroyo, but instead, they stopped halfway across the footbridge. Three of them raised their arms slowly, then threw their rocks over the fence and down into traffic. I didn’t understand what I was seeing until I heard the smashing sounds and honking, and then a bunch of crashes. A dust cloud rose. I heard long, drawn-out sounds of a rollover. Someone screamed. I crossed myself. The kids cheered, then moved above the northbound lanes. The few who still had their rocks did the same thing all over again. There were more horrible crashing sounds, so I finally shouted at them. I said, “Stop! Hey, stop! What are you doing?” But it was way too late for that, and they didn’t hear me, anyway.
By Philip Canterbury3 years ago in Fiction