Nonfiction
Writing that looks closely at the real world. Essays, memoir, and narrative pieces that examine experience with honesty and care.
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My father has been dead for over twenty-five years. Most of those who knew him when he was young, in his prime, or even as an older man are dead. I want to know if there are any left who knew my father, any lucid ninety-eight-year-old with time to reminisce. I want to interview the
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Sometime in the mid-1930s my great-grandma, born Vera Gazaway, wrote an essay. The essay itself is lost to the past—and to the soap company that sponsored the essay-writing contest she would go on to win. Some days I play pretend, musing on her musings, wondering if she used a typewriter or a fountain pen. Other
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Pieve Santo Stefano is called the “City of the Diary,” Citta Del Diario, and is about an hour and a half by car from Siena, in Tuscany. I’m going there because, in these years of returning to graduate school for creative nonfiction, I’ve found myself drawn again and again to the diary as a way
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As the latecomer enters the church from the front entrance, Rachael turns to look at her uncle, sitting beside her. He smiles in a whisper, gotta love how this place is designed and it was true. The church pews, laid out in crescents across the sanctuary, face the altar and the entrance purposefully, as if
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You are getting ready for school, but it’s Sunday. You’re not really sure what to wear, so you put on a polo and some khakis, like it’s any other school day, even though there hasn’t been a normal one in a week. It’s April 22, 2012. You’re 17. You say goodbye to your 8-year-old sister.
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When my female colleagues and I found out that Min had a baby out of wedlock, we envied her, believing that only economically independent women could afford such a choice. In China, single women who gave birth violated the one-child policy, making it difficult to register the child. Until recently, some regions allowed single women
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I’ve found myself in a city, a city that I have no true claim to, yet it vaguely matches my memories. I’ve been traversing the streets without navigation and haven’t gotten lost. But my body feels right here. In this city, I’ve found myself at a surprising number of bars—odd, considering I don’t think of myself as