Craft Essays: Issue 30, May 2009

Balancing Music and Meaning: An Interview with Kim Barnes on Short Nonfiction
by Gretchen Clark

The poet Richard Hugo said that poetry should be a battle between music and meaning and that neither should ever win, but, if one has to win, let it be music. In prose, that battle should tip in favor of meaning. Still, if you look at most very short essays, you’ll see that they rely on compression, intimation, and intuition – all the provinces of poetry.

Ten (or Twenty) Points on Publishing, Plus a Few Playful Tidbits
by Judith Kitchen

When to begin the process of submitting one’s work and weathering the storms of submission depend on any given writer’s sensibility – and vulnerability. Publication is the natural desire of any writer (even Emily Dickinson, who claimed she wanted all her poems burned, wrote in riddles – and have you ever told a riddle to yourself?), but the issues of when, how much, where, why, even how (notice I leave out who and what), those questions are highly individual.

Rejection: Give Up or Show Up?
by Kelli Russell Agodon

It’s never fun being rejected. Unlike the acceptance that can make you scream the Sally Field Oscar speech, You like me, you really like me!, being rejected can reduce us to feelings we thought we left behind in junior high when we sat alone at the long lunchroom table. This is how it feels sometimes: All of the cool kids are wearing paisley minis and I’m in a denim prairie skirt with my rejection slip showing.

Want to write a craft essay, or do an author Q&A or podcast interview for an upcoming issue of Brevity? If so, send your essay topic or author-interview idea and a brief bio note to craft editor Julie Riddle at brevitymag+craft@gmail.com.

Past Craft Essays

Issue 29, January 2009

Listen: An Interview with Brenda Miller (14:44)

On Practice: Letter to Holly from Cougar Ridge
by Brenda Miller

“Perhapsing”: The Use of Speculation in Creative Nonfiction
by Lisa Knopp

Issue 28, September 2008

Tiny Masters: An Artful Trick to Writing the Personal Essay
by Sherry Simpson

On Bridging the Distance Between Therapist and Theorist
by Barrie Jean Borich

Issue 27, May 2008

The Fact Behind the Facts, or How You Can Get It All Right and Still Get It All Wrong
by Philip Gerard

Issue 25, Fall 2007

Advice to My Friend Beth’s Undergraduate Creative Nonfiction Students
by Dustin Michael

Nonfiction Is Translation
by Brian Goedde

Issue 23, Winter 2007

Of Nails, Nonfiction, and Various Adhesives
by Shane Borrowman

Issue 21, Summer 2006

On Miniatures
by Lia Purpura

Prose Poems, Paragraphs, Brief Lyric Nonfiction
by Peggy Shumaker

Issue 20, Spring 2006

Frelection: The Transformative Power of Reflection in Nonfiction
by Rebecca McClanahan

A Riff on the [NonfictioNow] Writing Conference
by Rosemary Davis

Issue 19, Fall 2005

Writing Brief: Notes on Past and Future Brevity Submissions
by Linda Norlen

On the “Speedy Narrative”
by Jeff Gundy

Copyediting. Vital. Do It or Have It Done.
by Diana Hume George

Innocence & Experience: Voice in Creative Nonfiction
by Sue William Silverman

Laughing through Life: Humor in Autobiographical Writing
by Tim Jackson