Experiences of Disability: Our Guest Editors in Conversation
Sarah Fawn Montgomery: Editing this Brevity special issue, Experiences of Disability, has been an interesting process that reminds us of the power of language and the privilege of publishing. Can you both talk about why you initially wanted to edit this special issue, as well as the ways the emergence of COVID-19 and our current...
A Memoir Takes Its Place: A Conversation with Rebecca McClanahan
In 1998, with a sublet lined up but without jobs, Rebecca McClanahan and her husband left North Carolina and moved to New York City. They were well into middle age. (“Isn’t that backwards?” asked one of McClanahan’s nieces. “Don’t most people go to New York when they’re young?”) Expecting to stay for two years, they...
Writing as Discovery
On a beautiful July morning in 2004, my husband, three kids, and I headed down the trail to Hidden Lake Overlook in Glacier National Park. The skies were clear, the air warm with a gentle breeze. About a mile down the meandering trail, however, thick clouds rolled in. The temperature plummeted, and we became ensconced...
THE LATEST DRAFT
REVISION ON MY MIND ON REVISION A DRAFT ON REVISION START HERE? THE LATEST DRAFT The hardest part about revision — this is what I woke up thinking today — the hardest part is to sleep on it. In the flush of the moment, two drafts in (or three, or seven, or ten) we might...
How to Untangle Environmental Stories: Five Contradictory Lessons
When we talk about environmental writing, one irony has always fascinated and sometimes frustrated me. Alongside chronicling the wonders of the non-human world, we’re writing about people trying to fulfill very basic needs—food, air, water, clothing, shelter—in sustainable ways, but doing so leads us into a dense tangle of politics, race, gender, and class. Too...
Recognizing Eternal Moments in Narrative Nonfiction
A writer too sure of her material and destination can weaken her potential to discover new insights, ideas and connections as she writes. On its face, nonfiction seems more vulnerable to this than fiction and poetry. All three may begin with real-world events or memories, but fiction and poetry automatically release these events from the...
Chasing Our Elusive Voice
My writing partner of ten years was frowning. “The voice,” she began. “It’s formal and distant.” She stared at the manuscript I’d slaved over for months. “I can’t explain—it just seems off.” My friend had struck my literary Achilles’ heel. Voice is an aspect of writing craft I’ve struggled with for years. One of the...
A Review of James M. Chesbro’s A Lion in the Snow
I escaped the mayhem of the birthday party with a slice of cake, sinking with a sigh into the woven fabric of the front sitting-room couch. I was there to support my friend—mother of the birthday boy—but none of the screeching children belonged to me. A ten-year-old girl sat near the window, knees pulled into...
A Review of Tanya Marquardt’s Stray: Memoir of a Runaway
It was my last year in high school when my father and I had the granddaddy of all fights. He referred to my boyfriend by a racial slur, then the room exploded. Fists flew, clothes ripped, hair pulled. Once exhausted, we stumbled to our feet, wiped blood off our lips, and stared at one another....
A Review of Karen Babine’s All the Wild Hungers
When my mother-in-law was dying, I cooked. We brought her home from the hospital, the doctors having said there was nothing more they could do, and set her in her chair by the fire. Her husband of 45 years drifted through the house, his too-large belt cinched tight; her daughters seemed to fade into faint...
A Murder of Crows
Once upon a time in a summer camp as far north and left as you might go from here, there was not just one crow, but many. There always had been crows in that place. There was also a hired groundskeeper who watched after the summer camp cabins, repaired sheds and steps, cleared trails in...
A Review of Kelly J. Beard’s An Imperfect Rapture
“My mother saw demons,” begins Kelly J. Beard’s stunning debut memoir. Though I feared the narrator would show me the cruelty and violence of her parents’ chosen faith, she does so with such a commitment to understanding the sources of her family’s suffering that I had to follow her narrative. Religious fundamentalism and poverty, the...
Where to Publish Flash Nonfiction
This list, though extensive, is in no way exhaustive. Many literary journals will consider short prose whether they advertise that fact or not. But these links lead to journals that have expressed a specific interest: *82 Review100 Word Story Arts & LettersAtlas + AliceAtticus Review Baltimore ReviewBarren MagazineBending GenresBooth ReviewBrevity Blog (Craft Discussions, Essays on...
A Review of Jenny Boully’s Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life
Jenny Boully’s collection of essays on the writing life, Betwixt-and-Between, is indeed betwixt-and-between. It’s certainly a collection of essays, but it’s also something of a craft book, and it’s also wonderfully something … else. It’s the same way I have felt – as a woman but really more of a person, a person but really...
A Review of John McNally’s The Promise of Failure
When my niece was about eighteen months old and starting to learn to do things on her own, her mother, my sister, began framing their everyday outings as adventures. A trip to Target was an adventure, as was a visit to a friend’s house or a short walk to the neighborhood park to play on...
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