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In this video, Rachel Eliza Griffiths talks about grief, poetry, vulnerability, and writing her first memoir, The Flower Bearers (Random House, 2026), for an episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast with host Miwa Messer. For more on Griffiths, read “Marvelous and Dangerous: A Q&A With Rachel Eliza Griffiths” by Renée H. Shea.
Advertisements have been ubiquitous from the days of town criers and hand-painted signage, to radio spots and television commercials, and the digital billboards of the twenty-first century. Think back to a memorable ad from your childhood and write a lyrical essay inspired by the words and imagery found within it. How does the slogan resonate with a particular time in your life and your desires at that age? You might include snippets of phrases to consider how those words can take on new meanings when separated from their original context.
“A strange thing happens when a monument enters a museum: it becomes a lot less sure of itself,” writes Alex Kitnick in a 4Columns review about the MONUMENTS exhibition currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “Separated from their pedestals, museum monuments look lost, wandering, missing their lift.” Taking inspiration from this exhibition, which decontextualizes toppled Confederate memorial statues, pick out a statue or memorial that you find striking. Write an essay about the original intentions of the monument and then think about what it would mean to take it out of its physical and historical context. How does this act connect to your personal experiences?
“I write exclusively for myself—absolutely 100 percent myself.” In this BBC Arts in Motion segment, Karl Ove Knausgaard talks about his childhood spent with books, the doubts he had beginning his career as a writer, and his writing practice and breakthrough publishing My Struggle, a six-book autobiographical series.
In her new memoir, The Flower Bearers, Rachel Eliza Griffiths unpacks grief and hard-won survival with a poet’s touch, offering a narrative of raw vulnerability, strength, and resolve.
In a recent interview with George Saunders by David Marchese for the New York Times Magazine, the author, whose novel Vigil is forthcoming from Random House this month, talks about examining the concept of death and the afterlife. “Death is the moment when somebody comes and says: You know those three things that you’ve always thought of? They’re not true. You’re not permanent, you’re not the most important thing and you’re not separate,” says Saunders. “I think about it a lot, but I find it a joyful thing, because it’s just a reality check.” Spend some time thinking about what Saunders refers to as a “trio of delusions”—that is, the delusions of one’s permanence, self-importance, and separateness. Jot down any memories or anecdotes in which you recall seeing one or more of these delusions play out. Write an essay that considers how it is that these might actually be fallacies, and why it is that we hold onto these concepts.
Colosseum Books, Wiseblood Books, The Colosseum
The Chronology of Water, the directorial debut of Kristen Stewart, is a film adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s award-winning 2011 memoir of the same name. Starring Imogen Poots, the film traces the author’s life from her earliest memories in the Pacific Northwest as a promising competitive swimmer, through fractured relationships and addiction, to her emergence as a writer.
In 2024, Pete Wells wrote an essay about moving on from his position of twelve years as the chief restaurant critic for the New York Times, recounting how the demands of eating for his job took a toll on his body, and how colleagues in his profession often experience issues with their health. “We avoid mentioning weight the way actors avoid saying ‘Macbeth,’” writes Wells. “Partly, we do this out of politeness. Mostly, though, we all know that we’re standing on the rim of an endlessly deep hole and that if we look down we might fall in.” This week write a personal essay that examines your own relationship with food and dining out. Perhaps there’s a change you’d like to make or you’ve recently discovered a new sense of contentment with your habits of consumption. What are some memorable meals, good or bad?
“It is very weird to be written about in fiction or nonfiction.” In this event at Politics and Prose Bookstore, Susan Cheever reads from her book When All the Men Wore Hats: Susan Cheever on the Stories of John Cheever (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025), and discusses the life events that shaped the short stories written by her father, John Cheever, in a conversation with Molly Jong-Fast.
