Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 118

The Burrito Was a Lie: Guitars, Teen Essays and Erasure

By Andromeda Romano-Lax

My first freelance essays were accepted when I turned seventeen—fittingly, for the magazine of that name. The first, about my sister’s suicide attempt and my own self-blame for not having seen it coming, was contracted but didn’t run. I learned what a “kill fee” meant, and that knowledge, plus a check, was reward enough, especially since I’d written that essay for one reason only: to get the secret off my chest.

And maybe it was better that piece got killed. I’d given no ...

Writing A Memoir Can Be Dangerous Work. Protect Yourself!

By Aimee Christian

I thought I knew what I was getting into when I started my memoir because I’d been writing personal essays and creative nonfiction for some time. It didn’t take me long to learn that I was wrong. Writing memoir meant wandering around in my past in a whole new way, and I learned that my past can be a pretty bad neighborhood to be in alone.

When I try to re-immerse myself in how it felt to be a child or a teenager, it’s nearly impossible not to feel all the feelings fr...

A Tale of Two (or More) Agents

By Kathy Stevenson

Like many of you, when I started publishing my work – mostly essays and a few short stories – I always had a bigger project in the back of my mind.  I kept notebooks and files on these ideas.  Sometimes these projects seemed like they might be books.  I even self-published a novel (historical fiction) in 2001, just as Amazon was starting to be a big player, and sold the 4,000 copies I had printed, before I decided to move on.

A literary agent in Chicago read that boo...

A Review of Kathryn Nuernberger’s The Witch of Eye

By Heidi Czerwiec

After reading The Witch of Eye, Kathryn Nuernberger’s new collection of meditative and lyric essays about the cruelties inflicted on certain women—mainly “witches” but sometimes saints, though their ends are often equally as bloody—I was furious. As Nuernberger puts it, “I have anger and anger to spare.” Not because of reading the familiar stories—even if the named individuals are new to me, the stories are always “one version of the tragedy after another.” But because o...

Writer, Interrupted

By Heather Vi Kish

My fingers hover over the keyboard, ready to click-clack those first few words of the day.

“Momma! I need help wiping my butt!”

My eyes roll back to look at my brain for a moment before I FE-FI-FO-FUM my way to the bathroom.

It’s definitely a poop he could’ve handled on his own. “But there was so much of it!” he counters, pointing to the bowl.

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t wipe your…” I pinch my tear ducts closed. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. Just p...

Writing is Learning How to Die

By Amy Grier

We writers love to talk about why we write: to make meaning out of a chaotic world; to confront personal trauma by creating narrative; to transcend our ordinary lives and find purpose through our art. I’ve often said that writing is what keeps me grounded. Without it, life overwhelms and confuses me. I write to live.

Then I reread Hélène Cixous’ Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. It had been so long since I’d read it that I’d forgotten what the first step is: The School of Death....

The Writer Makes Coffee

By Rebecca D Martin

It begins with a cup of coffee, like this:

First, I dig the ceramic funnel from under the heap of dishes on the drying rack. I scoop the coffee beans, a rounded two Tablespoons, and then more for good measure, directly into the grinder and push down the lid and keep pressing and wait, and wait, until there isn’t any more grinding and the machine sounds like an airplane about to take off, the grounds are so fine. (Don’t do anything by halves in this stage of the game...

Partido

By Hiram Perez

I am eight years old and lost in my daydreams outside Kmart as I weave in and out between the iron bars used to keep people from stealing shopping carts. Suddenly I become aware of my father’s gaze. I meet his eyes and find myself immobilized by the disgust in his scowl.

He speaks—calmly, matter-of-factly: “Papo, if I ever find out you are a maricón, I will kill you and then kill myself.”

I don’t know what maricón means, though I hear it hurled at me enough times by o...

Children Hunting Bear in the Afternoon

By Noah Davis

A sow bear and a cub were hit by a truck on the road outside my neighborhood.

The cub’s torn black fur and cracked claws lay crumpled beside the blown tires. The sow bear, something soft ruptured behind her bones, scrambled up the incline into the green of Pennsylvania June and died in such a hidden place that turkey vultures still haven’t found her heft.

Today, a week later, in light as full as an afternoon, a surviving cub runs paw-heavy through my family’s backyard....

Speak Your Writing to Life

By David Perez

What might happen if you read your memoir aloud as if talking to a therapist, or your personal essay as if jogging on a treadmill? What might an unexpected whisper or pause bring to your novel or poem?

….

Reading aloud engages the senses, makes us think of rhythm, narrative flow, and stillness; connects us with how our words truly sound. Reading aloud slows us down. When we read in our minds we tend to zoom along, the brain processing much faster than the mouth can sp...