Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 70

Fantasy, Reality, and Grief: An Interview with Erin Langner

By Megan Griffin

Erin Langner

Erin Langner’s debut essay collection Souvenirs from Paradise intertwines her frequent visits to Las Vegas with an exploration of grief and childhood memory. As an art critic and museum staffer, Langner sees the sparkling city through the eyes of design, forming connections to the unique buildings she stays in and walks past. Megan Griffin talks with Langner below about craft, form, and how place can be a tool to uncover the past.

Megan Griffin: As humans we...

Diving into Immersion Memoir

By Sharon DeBartolo Carmack

One night as I flipped through TV stations, a woman with bleached-white hair, French-manicured talons, and an unmistakable Long Island accent caught my attention. Theresa Caputo, the Long Island Medium, supposedly channeled dead people.

Even though I’d always been fascinated by the paranormal, I was skeptical. I knew there wasn’t much reality in reality TV. I have been talking with the dead for three decades—as a professional genealogist. I channel long-forgo...

Eleven Urgent and Truly Helpful Bits of Advice for Nonfiction Writers

Jeannine Ouellette, author of the memoir The Part That Burns, offers a generous abundance of clear advice in her recent Substack essay “11 Urgent & Possibly Helpful Things I Have Learned From Reading Thousands of Manuscripts.”

Her advice comes from “more than twenty years of editorial experience, including a decade of magazine editing, developmental editing, and book coaching” she explains, before distilling that experience quite brilliantly.

For instance, on attention to language in ...

Reimagined Book Launch: A Brew Hall, Beer, and Books

by Nancy Jorgensen with Elizabeth Jorgensen

The bookseller tilted and steered her dolly past the bartop where green-jerseyed Packer fans lingered. In the corner, poets waited for my book event to begin, heads inclined to each other—rock tunes muffled conversation. Meanwhile, the Packer fans hurled curses at the television, blaspheming the Washington Commanders.

Raised Grain Brewing Company was not known for literary affairs, but I loved the vibe. Soaring ceiling, crisp modern architect...

Information Overwhelm

By Jennifer Lang

___

Dear Comrades,

Every day, from the second I open my eyes (and turn on my phone) to the second I crawl into bed (and turn off my phone), I scroll through dozens of writing-related emails:

weekly newsletters from Hope Clark’s FundsforWriters + Writer’s Relief, both of which I signed up for years ago;occasional newsletters from Kathy Fish’s The Art of Flash Fiction (with whom I took a few flash intensives online) + Jackie Bluu’s The Writer’s Den (where I su...

A Publishing Contract: When Jupiter Aligns with Mars

By Eileen Vorbach Collins

Finally, after a year spent fretting over the difference between a synopsis and an overview, what to include in a proposal, which comp titles are actually comparable, and submitting my manuscript to more than 20 small presses I had three offers for publication.

The first was contingent on my changing the structure, because “essay collections don’t sell.” I’d need to rewrite the book in a more traditional memoir format. Excited to have an offer, I considered it;...

The Body is Nonfiction

Learning to become aware of our story at a cellular level

By Charlotte Wilkins

It’s old but flawlessly restored, glinting metallic new-penny paint, a color that didn’t exist “back then.” A Chevy pickup, the 1940’s shape unmistakable. I’ll have to wait till it passes to pull into the street.

The truck reels past, the shutter freezing on a single frame in my windshield. Sound, movement, thought, breath all suspended, my fingers clamp round the steering wheel, foot jams harder on the br...

Author Bio? Author Crisis!

By Amanda Le Rougetel

—The End— 

Yay! My creative nonfiction piece is complete. 

Phew.

Next: Double-check the submission deadline and guidelines. Check for typos. Then, send: Off it goes. 

Happy dance. Cup of tea. Catch up on house chores. 

And wait. 

One morning, my email inbox pings: Accepted! Oh, my goodness, yes! 

But then, what’s this? They need an “author bio.” 

An end piece that describes me as a writer. 

Ah. OK. Fine. 

But is it?

I’ve been writing f...

On Useful Feedback and Silencing the Inner Critic

By Camilla Sanderson

Thinking about the first workshop I took as a student in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program, I feel compassion for my fellow writers. I didn’t know what I was doing, was all opinion and ego, and wasn’t even sure what ‘craft’ was exactly. It wasn’t so much that I suffered with bad feedback from others—I had the audacity back then to simply dismiss whatever didn’t resonate. But what I truly regret is not knowing how to give better feedback to my fellow writers...

I Wanted to Write a Memoir. I Wrote It in Music First.

Had I written the essays as personal therapy, or did they belong with the work?

By Buick Audra

I walked away from my solo music after the release of my second album in 2011. In the years that followed, I gained clarity around the decision; I just had to figure out how to share it. I took workshops about writing memoir and personal essay and wrote down everything, even the parts I didn’t understand or agree with. I could sort that out later. I was gathering wisdom and experience; I was g...