NEW writing courses in the essay open for registration! Info here: jilltalbot.net/seminars #writing #nonfiction #amwriting #literarynonfiction #womenwriters #essays #writersky #writingcraft #writingclass

"[My accent] does appear, however fleetingly, and without my permission." I so get this essay by Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza @lithub.com.web.brid.gy People tell me they hear the Texas in my voice when I talk on the phone or after I've had a glass or two of wine. lithub.com/losing-my-so...

“I could spend hours trying to write [my childhood home] as it should be written . . . I should only succeed if I had begun by describing Virginia herself." — Virginia Woolf Join me December 10th (7-9 Eastern) to discuss persona in the personal essay/memoir. writingworkshops.com/products/ide...

Great list here! @literaryhub.bsky.social lithub.com/100-notable-...

Thanks to @sonorareview.bsky.social for publishing my essay. sonorareview.com/2025/11/04/s...

"The postcards materialize an unselfconscious act, a persona not quite public, a version of herself meant to be seen by one other person for a fleeting moment." — Sarah Bochicchio @theparisreivew.bsky.social www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/11...

"What is it about the steady movement of a vehicle—a bus, a plane, a boat, a train—that makes every possible life I could live spill out in front of me?" — Maggie Hart Love the setting & details & rumination in this essay. @offassignment.bsky.social www.offassignment.com/articles/mag...

Six Novembers ago (!!), the first essay in my year-long @theparisreivew.bsky.social column ran, followed by 17 more essays across the four seasons about me & my daughter in the year before she left for college—leading to the day I drove away from her dorm. www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/11...

"I, likewise, have invented scenes that occurred long before my birth. I have filled in gaps in the record, 'remembered' things I could not remember, and here and there written what I liked for the sheer fun of writing it." — Gish Jen @lithub.com.web.brid.gy lithub.com/whats-real-a...

"Sometimes, we learn the meaning of words and it has nothing to do with dictionaries; the kinds of meanings we learn because we must live them." "[H]e has become a shoebox of letters in the closet, on a shelf too high for me reach." — Allison Albino The Missouri Review missourireview.com/albino/

"As we drove on, the miles slipping away beneath us, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there were things that lived in the spaces between what my mother told me and what she kept hidden." —Fay Sachpatzidis @baltimorereview.bsky.social A fascinating essay baltimorereview.org/summer_2025/...

"As it turns out, I prefer the doorknobs as useless objects, tucked into the back corner of a closet. I suppose at some point they’ll no longer speak to me, and I’ll set them out on the stoop for someone else to take." — Katie Kitamura @yalereview.bsky.social yalereview.org/article/kati...

“I just want to think out loud about the things that matter most to me.” @zadiesmith.bsky.social @newyorker.com www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

"In elementary school art class, we studied the color wheel and contour lines and Vincent van Gogh, which is perhaps where I got the idea that mental illness is a prerequisite of being a successful artist." New @gabemontesanti.bsky.social Essay Alert! @anmlymag.bsky.social anmly.org/ap40/gabe-mo...

Sue William Silverman's latest essay collection: Amazing. I knew it would be when I saw glowing blurbs by other amazing essayists: @paullisicky.bsky.social @jillchristman.bsky.social & Sonja Livingston. @univnebpress.bsky.social

“Away from anything and everything familiar, I was where I wanted to be.” — Joanna Pocock gives us an immersive road narrative in conversation with other writers of the road, views from her past & present self, environmental geography & a celebration of the roadside motel. #ontheroad

Moved & proud to be a part of this anthology with a collaborative essay with Marcia Aldrich along with an impressive list of contributors. With thanks to an extraordinary editor, Stephanie Vessely. Pre-order here: www.fulcrumbooks.com/product-page...

Published 10 years ago today! softskull.com/books/the-wa... #memoir #books #singlemother #memoirinessays #motherdaughter #roadnarrative #home

My friend, Liane Malinowski, has a wonderful guest essay in Jack Christian’s charming #Substack, Day Dates. I recommend both. open.substack.com/pub/daydates...

I have so much admiration for (& experiential connections with) this memoir by Hala Alyan. A powerful memoir, but also a series of well-crafted, form-forward essays. And so much more. If you've ever waited & guarded your wanting. @simonandschuster.bsky.social www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ill-Te...

Today! The Lyric Essay | 4:00 EST Free registration: www.thepoetscorner.org/events/the-l...

Holy shit this is amazing writing. Hala Alyan @electricliterature.com electricliterature.com/an-excerpt-f...

"[W]e are all carrying a unique ache, or a unique memory, or a unique desire." — Hanif Abdurraqib @newyorker.com www.newyorker.com/culture/essa...

So cool! A postcard chapbook in @newlettersmagazine.bsky.social by Courtney Kersten. Also available online: www.newletters.org/address-unkn...

For Mothers—in every moment, in every phase, in every season. @wapress.bsky.social bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

"I . . . write down the names of motels I pass, partly because they’ve devolved from Technicolor postcard destinations with mod geometric signs, to roadside slumps of peeling paint and mediocre marquee promises." @emdashphillips.bsky.social blackbird-archive.vcu.edu/v14n1/nonfic...

"We’re all still here, with the windows down, suspended somewhere between then and now." — Melissa Faliveno @kenyonreview.bsky.social kenyonreview.org/piece/drivin...

Looking forward to discussing the lyric essay on Sunday, June 8. Registration open (it's free). www.thepoetscorner.org/events/the-l...

"Few people travel the back roads anymore, and highways are speckled with fast food and chain motels. Postcards and souvenirs are things of the past—no one wants a decorative spoon from every state." —Jane Stern @theparisreivew.bsky.social www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/04...

"I drove as far as I could west. I had a big cold drink in the cup holder and I felt like I was running after the sun, hoping to give myself a little longer in the light." Love this essay @literaryhub.bsky.social lithub.com/how-to-write...

I mailed postcards from the airport.

"When I’m putting words on paper, the self is more like a perspective, an angle of vision, a complicating factor, a questioning presence." — Charles D'Ambrosio www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

Late checkout available.

"I’m primarily drawn to the essay because its central engine is the writer’s mind—not their voice or their storytelling ability, not what has happened to them, but how they think about it." — Sarah Minor @passagesnorth.bsky.social www.passagesnorth.com/passagesnort...

Looking forward to my week as the Visiting Writer for College of Saint Benedict's Literary Arts Institute's Spring 2025 Residency. I'm excited to visit classes, work one-on-one with students, and be in Minnesota for the first time!

Started @paullisicky.bsky.social's new memoir yesterday and had to stop myself from finishing it in one sitting. I'm slowing down. Only one section in and already, so many of my blue-pen underlines.

In The Electric Horseman, Sonny Steele (Robert Redford) says he's “movin’” toward “something simple, hard maybe, but plain, quiet." I resigned from UNT, so this will be my last semester. I don't know where I'm going, but I feel good about myself and my own wandering ways.

"I'd live on a train if someone gave me one." — Sam Shepard Same.

"I am thinking of the past . . . it is then that I am living more fully in the present. For the present when backed by the past is a thousand times deeper than the present when it presses so close that you can feel nothing else." — Virginia Woolf, A Sketch of the Past