Jump to navigation Skip to content
“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.
“I notice a weird thing about Zoom: In order to give people the impression that you’re making eye contact, you have to look not at them but at the camera lens,” writes Anne Fadiman in her essay “Screen Share,” which appears in her collection Frog: And Other Essays, forthcoming in February from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “Their images are lower down. If you look at them, you won’t look as if you’re looking at them.” In the essay, Fadiman recounts shifting from teaching in-person classes to learning a new technology during the pandemic, as well as the social and practical challenges she and her students faced. Write a personal essay about your relationship to a specific technology, whether it be smartphones, apps, navigation systems, chatbots, or streaming media. What is revealed by the technology you choose to use when it comes to your values and relationships?
The author of Voice of the Fish: A Lyric Essay (Graywolf Press, 2022) reflects on what a trans essay might look like.
Do you want to spend time eating in a place that’s been called a “fully immersive postmodern design hellscape-themed dining experience?” Over the years, despite the eclectic interior decor, ambience, and absurdly lengthy menu that has been written about by bewildered yet admiring journalists, the Cheesecake Factory has become a top-ranked casual restaurant chain and a cult favorite amongst celebrities. Think about the interior of a place that you have strong opinions about. Maybe it’s a room in a grandparents’ house from long ago, a particular restaurant, library, or a favorite bookstore. Write a personal essay that describes in detail the various architectural and interior design elements at play. Examine your personal memories in connection to your aesthetic responses to the site to make your descriptions as vivid as possible.
