BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
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Brevity Blog is a place to discuss issues related to the writing of creative nonfiction. Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction has published well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief essay form, along with craft essays and book reviews.
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
1h ago
By Liz deBeer Many years ago, when I was working toward a master’s degree in English at Rutgers University, my instructor, an acclaimed author, saw himself as a gatekeeper: a judge who determined who had a story worthy of telling, as opposed to everyone else whom he felt was wasting his time. He responded to ..read more
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
3d ago
By Karen DeBonis One year out from the release of my debut memoir Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived, and a month or so after releasing the self-produced audiobook version, I decided to become more strategic about my marketing. Over the previous two years, I’d said yes to every podcast ..read more
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
5d ago
By Dr. Tamara MC A Q&A WITH TIA LEVINGS Tia Levings’ memoir, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape From Christian Patriarchy (St. Martin’s Press, August 2024), recounts her escape from the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement, a group that encourages large families and strict adherence to patriarchal roles, viewing children as “arrows” in a “quiver” for God’s purposes ..read more
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
1w ago
By Olga Katsovskiy Participating in workshops often gives me the extra push I need to work on my writing, and observing other instructors in action helps me refine my own teaching philosophy, so I recently took a class geared towards The Moth StorySLAM style of storytelling. Going in, I assumed creative nonfiction translates well into ..read more
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
1w ago
By Nina B. Lichtenstein A week before my first writing packet was due in my first semester of the Stonecoast MFA in creative nonfiction, I had completed the assigned readings and annotations. I was used to and (almost) enjoyed the “academic” part of the monthly assignment (a PhD in French had implanted enough muscle memory ..read more
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
1w ago
By Allison K Williams You’ve heard it. You need a mailing list. You’ve heard this, too: Everyone’s on Substack. You may have even heard Blogs are dead. (Hello, we’re not). And sure, you like sharing your work and one day you’re going to publish a book or another book and it would be nice to ..read more
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
1w ago
By Jenn Hall In 2020, my best friend Ginny died at home. She was my sister friend. My ride or die friend (before that was a thing). She was the one who made everything OK. In the months that followed, I developed odd habits. I wandered my early pandemic hallways in pajamas like a neo-Victorian ..read more
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
1w ago
By Abby Alten Schwartz In March 2020, days before the world shut down, my friend called, frantic. She needed me to check on her ex-husband who lived in my cul-de-sac. Their 16-year-old son had tried to wake him, but he was unresponsive and my friend was still 40 minutes away. I called 911 and took ..read more
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
1w ago
By Jennifer Leigh Selig When I lead memoir writing retreats, I like to kickstart the mornings with writing prompts. One of the tricks of my trade is a manilla envelope stuffed with images I’ve printed out of vintage and iconic toys and games from across the decades. It’s a ritual I cherish—spreading these images out ..read more
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
2w ago
By Jessica L. Pavia Despite my many years spent in school to be a writer, revision remains utterly mysterious. I finish a piece and comb through its mess, lost in where to start, how to make it better—wishfully hoping, instead, that it’s immediately perfect and polished. So it was a shock that a breakthrough came ..read more