Personal Essay
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Enough
I move into an old house in Ypsilanti and winter there, braving sub-zero temperatures only to drive to and from work. The rest of the time I’m in bed, swaddling myself in a wool blanket through the twilight days of a Michigan January, shielding myself from the house’s drafts and chills. Chills haunt me through… Continue reading
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Bread
I was six years old when I first tasted homemade bread. In the hills of Western Maryland, in a cramped kitchen with outdated appliances and faded wallpaper, my grandmother filled Mason jars with fruit preserves, pickles, tomatoes, and green beans. She grew salad greens in her tiny backyard and baked her own cakes and pies.… Continue reading
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Blog Post, Interrupted
Several weeks ago at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention, I presented a paper titled “Othering the Self: The Potential Benefits of Assigning College Students to Write Personal Narratives from a Second Person Point of View.” I intended to blog about my presentation immediately after the conference. But when I returned … Continue reading
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Surfing the Web’s Great Creative Nonfiction
I am always looking for great creative nonfiction that is easily accessible on the Web. Here are some essays that I have found recently. I hope you will check them out and enjoy them. . Hannah Howard Grilled Cheese and Grief: How I Cooked My Way through Postpartum Depression I’m a fan of Hannah Howard’s books… Continue reading
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How to Write about What You Don’t Know in Personal Nonfiction
Writing personal nonfiction—memoir or the personal essay—generally requires us to approach our subjects from a first-person point of view. Since we are telling our own stories, we naturally refer to ourselves as “I” and speak as ourselves. We write as factual human beings about our actual lived experiences. By writing in first-person, though, we limit ourselves… Continue reading
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Let’s Legitimize Personal Nonfiction
Several years ago, I attended a week-long writers’ conference on a university campus during which participants were divided into workshop groups based on genre, theme, or focus. I was in the group of memoirists whose workshop was titled Writing through and about Trauma. We were eight women who had survived various kinds of childhood and… Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
Person on the Page 