Poetry: A Bridge
The poet, performer, and activist Essex Hemphill, who died in 1995, often focused his writing on his experiences as a Black gay man in the 1980s, exploring themes such as interracial interactions, love, the AIDS crisis, the patriarchy, and gender norms. In “American Family, 1984,” which appears in his posthumously published collection, Love Is a Dangerous Word: Selected Poems (New Directions, 2025), edited by John Keene and Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Hemphill uses the metaphorical image of a bridge to meditate on a conflicting relationship with a father figure: “He is the bridge / which on one side / I stand feeling doomed / to never forgive him / for the violence in our past, / while on the other side / he vigorously waves to me / to cross over, / but he doesn’t know / the bridge has fallen through.” Write a poem that makes use of a bridge to function as a metaphor for a familial relationship with complex or even contradictory dynamics. Challenge yourself to find a way to inject your interpretation of the metaphor with an unexpected viewpoint.
Fiction: Histories
Felix Nesi’s debut novel, People From Oetimu, translated from the Indonesian by Lara Norgaard and published by Archipelago Books in February, tells the story of two young lovers in a fictional town on the border between Indonesia and East Timor in a time of war and violence. In an afterword, Norgaard writes that the novel is about history, but it is not a historical novel. “[T]he novel unfurls into the recent political past of an island marked by conflict and occupation to show how history resurfaces in the present, how communities confront or bury experiences of violent repression, and how structures of power, like the state and the church, carry out acts of violence and paper over their crimes in official discourse,” writes Norgaard. Taking inspiration from this premise, write a short story that is about history but not what one would conventionally deem historical fiction. How do history books, historians, and powerful institutions play a role in your concept of history?
Nonfiction: Rebirth
Daffodil, tulip, hyacinth, and crocus bulbs revive from winter dormancy while bears, bats, squirrels, snakes, groundhogs, and frogs emerge from hibernation during springtime: a season of new beginnings as well as renewal. Think back to a personality trait or tendency that you associate with your past, perhaps a particular relationship dynamic, a specific habit, or an outlook that is no longer a notable part of your life but that has the potential to make a comeback. Write a lyrical essay that speculates on the idea of latency and the tension that exists in the intermediary knowledge that what once was present can blossom again. Reflect on the possibility of different contexts and environmental factors in each of the states—of birth, dormancy, and future rebirth—for this revival of a former self.
Suggested Reading
Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create (David R. Godine, March 2025) by Elissa Altman The author of three books of creative nonfiction, including Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing (Random House, 2020), with more than a decade of experience teaching the craft of memoir, Elissa Altman poses important questions that any writer with a personal story to tell must confront: “Who am I to tell my story? And how can we grant ourselves permission to write the stories we’re compelled to tell when we’ve been told we shouldn’t?” Through an exploration of her own story, which started with what she calls a “non-secret secret” about her father that had a profound effect on her and her family, “binding us together for the entirety of our lives,” Altman offers a compassionate, inspiring literary guide to transcending the fear and shame that can all too often keep important stories from being written. Read “The Choice to Create,” a chapter from Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create.
Thumbnail credit: Ananth Pai
