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In the high desert north of Phoenix, 17 men lie prone on a concrete platform behind sniper rifles. Their heavy rounds kick up dust and pockmark the steel targets on a hillside six football fields away. Into this storm of whizzing lead ambles a 10-point buck. Far from the noise of the rifles, he calmly chews on some mesquite leaves.
A shooter yells, “Deer!”
An instructor jumps behind a spotting scope. “Shit, that’s the first one I’ve ever seen out here.”
The shooter’s spotter slaps his partner on the back and studies the majestic stag through his scope. “What a beautiful animal,” he says. “Can we kill it?” click to read

The Favour Of A Reply
By Stinson Carter

The invitation came engraved on the finest gilded cardstock. I tried to tuck it away in the pile of bills on my desk, but after ten years of tucking her away, I realized I could no longer keep our past in unopened envelopes and unreturned phone calls.

I was an awkward ex-pat Southerner trying to find my place at a new school in a foreign corner of the country with a grownup secret in my teenage head. And Audrey was the first person I ever told.

After my parents’ divorce in Louisiana, we stopped going to church, I stopped going to private school, and the bank took back the house of my tree forts and Christmas mornings. My father lost his business, my mother lost her fairytale, and I lost any ideas I still had that the grownups can make anything better. My dad ran off to Seattle to build a new life, and my mom and I started over in a Transcendental Meditation community in Iowa. I was twelve. At fourteen, I left my mother and my mantra and moved to Seattle. Six months into living with my father, I found out why our Southern life had fallen apart. He sat me down one afternoon in our apartment, hesitated in putting his hand on my shoulder, and said, “I need to talk to you about the fact that your father is gay.”
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Love On The Halfshell
BlackBook Magazine, June/July 2007
by Stinson Carter

“I’ve always been into turtles. But I’ve been closeted about it,” says Eric Goode, understatedly referring to his idyllic three-acre compound in Ojai, California, where he cares for, feeds, and houses 300 turtles and tortoises, 15 rare species in all, some of which subsist largely on hors d’oeuvres of escargot.

Just north of Ventura, Highway 33 makes an inland trek from the Pacific Coast Highway into the foothills of the Sierra Madres. The notion that you’ve left Southern California behind first hits you as you drive through the menthol-scented colonnade of eucalyptus trees on the outskirts of Ojai. The shops and restaurants in the heart of town mostly fit within one long, continuous white stucco arcade–shading the Spanish tile walkway outside windows displaying crystals and dream catchers, vegetarian lunch specials, and watercolor landscapes. The skate park at the eastern edge of town is devoid of rebellion, as local kids would catch more flack for lighting up a cigarette than they would for lighting up a joint. click to continue reading

Mr. Pink
By Stinson Carter
Room 100 Magazine, Summer 2008

New Orleans–It’s a late Friday afternoon in the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, and the hazy sunset is stretching across the Mississippi, gleaming against the 150 hot-pink tents dotting empty lots that were once a neighborhood (albeit a modest one).

Although it looks like a public art project, this is no Christo exhibit. It is Brad Pitt’s Pink Project. And the worldwide attention it has attracted for his green redevelopment plan has served as a pledge to those who once lived here that they have not been forgotten. click to continue reading