“An ideal essay is hard to define, but easy to point to. An ideal essay mines the “I” in efforts of high exposition. It is driven by a need to testify or witness, and demands the same of its reader. It is a glimpse of something uncomfortably recognizable, a requiem for the quotidian, a look over the newly-gilded edge.” Samantha Tucker Iacovetto writes about “Defining the Ideal Essay” for Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog
The Ideal Essay
Want to Write Better Fiction? Become a Translator
For K.E. Semmel, Jenny Croft, Idra Novey, and Bruna Dantas Lobato, translation was a crucial training ground for writing fiction.
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Becca Rothfeld’s Exuberant Ode to the Risks of Rapture
There is no experience of longing that is not, at the same time, an ethical revelation.
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Elias Canetti’s Words Against Death
The marks on the page are the opposite of the marks on the tombstone.
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Lilly Dancyger Is Rethinking the Ethics of Memoir
"I do think that we, as writers, owe things to the people in our lives that we care about."
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Against ‘Latin American Literature’
The classification of “Latin American literature” puts both Anglophone and Hispanophone writers in a double-bind.
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