Bright Fragments

Compiling a Book of Published Essays

By Beth Kaplan

Through the 1990s, I wrote a lot of essays. A 40-something former actress and single mother without money or confidence, I was struggling to turn into a writer in my spare time. One day I saw that a national newspaper had reserved its back page for thousand-word personal essays by the general public. I sent in a story about an elderly neighbour teaching me to garden, and two weeks later, it appeared. The paper paid a big fat $100.

A...