Our Craft Essay Archive extends back to 2005, a rich trove of essays exploring the challenges of writing, the craft of characterization, voice, image, syntax, and structure, author interviews, and many other aspects of the writing life. You can access these essays here, or by using the search box. We have also tagged many of our Craft Essays (along with flash nonfiction essays tied to various craft elements) in these pages: Searching Brevity Essays by Mode A searchable index allowing readers, writers, teachers, and students to locate essays written in a particular nonfiction form, su ..read more

As of March 2024, Brevity has folded our Craft Essay section into The Brevity Blog, side-by-side with an active daily discussion of craft and the writing life. The Brevity Blog reaches thousands of readers each month, with the aim of publishing quality essays that include the arc and movement found in all good essays. Appropriate topics for the Blog include the craft of writing nonfiction, issues in editing and publishing, writing conference and creative writing classroom experiences, interviews with writers or editors, prompts, close readings of essays or essayists, or specific ..read more

Introducing Brevity’s latest special issue, which also happens to be its 75th, featuring brilliant new writing by Lee Anderson, Nic Anstett, Kay Ulanday Barrett, KB Brookins, Rivka Clifton, Mac Crane, Atlas Desmond, Melissa Faliveno, Eric LeMay, Katherine Scott Nelson, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Ocean Wei. Each piece is accompanied by gorgeous visual work by artist Kah Yangni of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, whose vibrant art showcases the beauty of queer joy and efflorescence, the bright spirit of trans resiliency and resistance. These 12 brief essays touch on myriad facets of what it mean ..read more

I want trans people to take up space. I want to take up space. When I was ten years old my parents sat me down to tell me my professional basketball dreams were not practical due to my size, and that was before transition. I am 5’5 and scrawny no matter what I eat or do. When my partner installed a latch near the top of the front door so our preschooler could not let himself out to go call for neighbors at all hours of the day and night, I had to stand on tiptoes to operate it. I do not stand out in crowds. I am often told I look like somebody else. Did I see you shopping in my neighborhood th ..read more

I have been trying, for several years, to write about friendship—particularly friendship between adult men and the ways that it’s complicated, for me, as a transgender man who didn’t come out until his early twenties. For the same several years, I have failed miserably at writing this essay. I couldn’t figure out why. It felt dishonest, even when everything I wrote was “true.” I’ve put it aside and restarted it dozens of times. Recently, when trying yet again to approach this subject matter, I remembered something one of my undergrad professors said to me in workshop. I was 21, had just recent ..read more

I have been trying, for several years, to write about friendship—particularly friendship between adult men and the ways that it’s complicated, for me, as a transgender man who didn’t come out until his early twenties. For the same several years, I have failed miserably at writing this essay. I couldn’t figure out why. It felt dishonest, even when everything I wrote was “true.” I’ve put it aside and restarted it dozens of times. Recently, when trying yet again to approach this subject matter, I remembered something one of my undergrad professors said to me in workshop. I was 21, had just recent ..read more

Introducing Brevity’s latest special issue, which also happens to be its 75th, featuring brilliant new writing by Lee Anderson, Nic Anstett, Kay Ulanday Barrett, KB Brookins, Rivka Clifton, Mac Crane, Atlas Desmond, Melissa Faliveno, Eric LeMay, Katherine Scott Nelson, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Ocean Wei. Each piece is accompanied by gorgeous visual work by artist Kah Yangni of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, whose vibrant art showcases the beauty of queer joy and efflorescence, the bright spirit of trans resiliency and resistance. These 12 brief essays touch on myriad facets of what it mean ..read more

There’s a new curve to my hip that wasn’t there before. My stomach is softer than it used to be, my breasts a little bigger. My arms and shoulders are less defined. What once was ridge is now gentler slope. I stand in the mirror, posture and pose, hold flesh in my hand, fill it. I turned forty this year, and my body is changing shape. Not so much, but enough that I notice, enough that I know it, enough that what I see in the mirror as I step out of the shower, as I wipe away the steam, looks more like a stranger each day. I can’t make sense of these contours. I don’t understand these lines. I ..read more

Growing up playing sports everyone called me Crane. Whether my coaches were screaming at me, barking at me, cursing me under their breath, or praising me, it was Crane this, Crane that. I liked the sound of it in their mouths, reminding me that I was an athlete. To be an athlete, in my eyes, was to be greater than human, god-like. To transcend the fraught questions you had about things like your gender and who you wanted to kiss when the lights turned low. In high school and college, I wore Crane on the back of my jersey, down the sleeve of my sweatshirt. In the morning paper, the sports secti ..read more

The thing about a Derek Jarman movie is when you find yourself crying you don’t know why you’re crying, not exactly. It’s the layering of everything. Like the memory of seeing his movies at the Castro Theatre in the early-‘90s when everyone was dying, we were watching or trying not to watch but we were watching, on and off-screen, yes, I found Derek Jarman as he was dying of AIDS. Torturers in Santa outfits, drinking champagne. The nuclear power plant on the beach, a yellow-green sunset, fires burning everything, spit on the glass, the clockwise and the counter, the lights as backdrop, the dro ..read more