numerocinqlogoI’ll confess right now: I have a bee in my bonnet when it comes to certain works of nonfiction–memoirs and some personal essays in particular. These pieces tend to have the same issue which I’ll call a failure to communicate. The writer is telling a story, and many times it is a difficult, even harrowing, story but she hasn’t written it in a way that conveys meaning for the reader. I’ve often wondered what’s missing for this work and how to avoid similar pitfalls in my own writing so I explored the issue as part of my MFA studies at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. The result: a craft essay entitled, The Personal Essay and the Pain of Experience: Communicating to the Broadest Possible Audience. As models I examined three texts in particular: Elie Wiesel’s Night, Eula Biss’s Notes from No Man’s Land, and James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son. I’m happy to report the online literary journal Numero Cinq has published the piece in its July issue. You can read it at this link. If you’re a writer of creative nonfiction, I hope you’ll find it abundantly useful.

Cheers,