Discovering the Why of Your Essay Collection

by Patrice Gopo

In the early days of the pandemic, words fell from my fingers, returning to me after a time of absence. Several years before, in the aftermath of the publication of my first book of essays, I had found myself unable to create. How strange that this time of lockdown existed side by side with my emergence from a creative wilderness.

I didn’t ponder this oddity, though. Instead, I wrote and wrote and wrote. And later as the headlines filled with George Floyd’s murder and th...