Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction | Brevity: The journal devoted exclusively to the concise literary nonfiction.

Carne Santificata

by Kim Barnes

I am happy in this village above the sea, this Anacapri, where my husband and I, retired and tending our bucket list, have come to write and escape the dead of another Idaho winter. It is spring here, first flowers blooming, too early in the season for most tourists. The...

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

Good Jew

by Xavier Blackwell-Lipkind

I only go to one bar mitzvah, and it isn’t my own. I wear a yarmulke for the first and last time. I spend three days learning Yiddish on Duolingo and give up. I’m pretty sure I use the word “spiel” wrong. Sometimes, when the men on the corner ask...

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

Boxes

by David Gessner

In this holy place, surrounded by portraits of the bearded and long deceased, I go about the familiar rituals. I hand the card with my request to the research librarian, and she walks over and sends a message to those below, in the building’s bowels. There the subterranean workers—it is...

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

Raiment

by Maria Hummel

When my father stopped eating and we all understood it was a matter of time, I drove from Vermont to Boston to see him at the nursing home. He’d suffered a steady decline and lost the ability to care for himself, but his memory and cognitive abilities did not have...

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

A Stranded Moose

by Sydney Lea

A moose had stranded herself shoulder-deep in the bog last fall, at the southerly end of Long Pond. Of course, a car in the mud is one thing, a foundered moose another. One is a matter of inconvenience, the other of life or death. The animal was helpless, paralyzed. Fish...

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

I Know My Body Tried to Save Me

by Andrew Romriell

Dirty, Poz, Faggot, G.R.I.D: pseudonyms for the boy I don’t want to be. Gay-related. Gay-related. I don’t want to be gay-related. I don’t want to be human-immunodeficient either. I don’t want to be in this I.D. clinic reading Tiny Beautiful Things, a book of collected advice columns, a bible that...

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

Hungry Because This World Is So Very Full

by Brad Aaron Modlin

Across from the mountains, across from the fishing boat paused in the waves, waves like aluminum foil, across from the snowcaps too high to melt, and across from the peaks singing Climb us, climb us! Grab a grappling hook, across from the boat and the sushi it harvests: salmon rolls...

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

Imperfection & Other Promises

by Isaac Pickell

My dad woke up pale and shaky on the hospital bed and asked me whether the dreams are even his anymore or if he’s just watching them. All I can do is gesture an answer; it’s still a week before they’ll know what’s wrong. His is the viscous pragmatism of...

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

The Fair Kids

by Jean Coco

That’s what the teachers called them when they arrived at school every year in early October. Even though they looked worn-out in their faded, frayed clothes, I imagined their lives as worldly, exotic, roving from place to place, delivering three days of carnival razzle-dazzle to small towns like mine. I...

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

Night With Blue Eyes

by Susan Telander

For the last thirty-nine years, I have slept with another man. He has pale blue eyes like my husband. I don’t remember an introduction, though there must have been one to dull the danger so I wouldn’t feel those eyes on me. He is a predator. He is The Norwegian....

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

Jijivisha

by Natasha Singh

His physiotherapy was supposed to have started immediately, but it has been a stop-and-go process. More of a hard stop really because when your father says he is too tired to walk, the physiotherapists take him at his word and go on to the next patient. By the end of...

Current Issue / Issue 73 / May 2023 / Nonfiction

Grief-Keeping

by Minadora Macheret

The first prayer I remember was shma ysrael Adonai elohaynu… trailing off into quiet murmurings of twitching lips, children’s hands covering their eyes as they recited the rest of the prayer. Too holy of a moment, in case God decided to appear. You cover your eyes to concentrate, the rabbi...

Latest Issue

Issue 73 / May 2023

May 1, 2023

Our May 2023 issue features new nonfiction from Kim Barnes, Xavier Blackwell-Lipkind, David Gessner, Maria Hummel, Sydney Lea, Brad Aaron Modlin, Jean Coco, Minadora Macheret, Andrew Romriell, Isaac Pickell, Susan Telander, and Natasha Singh

Craft Essays

May 1, 2023

New in our Craft Section, Jill Patterson contemplates flash essays as fireworks: a single bloom that bursts then swells into meaning; Jack Lancaster dissects the power of a carefully constructed parenthetical aside; and Amanda Le Rougetel reminds us that the writer/editor relationship, when approached with skill and respect, is rewarding for both author and editor...

Teaching with Brevity

May 1, 2023

Our TEACHING RESOURCES pages offer a diverse set of resources for writers and teachers of the flash form, including teaching tools, syllabi, prompts, craft essays, subject and craft element indexes, and much more.

Carne Santificata

Good Jew

Boxes

Raiment

A Stranded Moose

I Know My Body Tried to Save Me

Hungry Because This World Is So Very Full

Imperfection & Other Promises

The Fair Kids

Night With Blue Eyes

Jijivisha

Grief-Keeping

Issue 73 / May 2023

Craft Essays

Teaching with Brevity

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