Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Framed Story

The Time Is Now
2.20.20

In the New York Times Letter of Recommendation series, Durga Chew-Bose writes about the value of getting an assortment of things framed after moving to an apartment in Montreal. “Some of us are born a little mournful, and we spend our lives discovering new traditions for housing those ghosts we’ve long considered companions. Framing, I’d venture, is central to this urge. It gives memories a physique.” Think of a memory that continues to haunt you like a ghost. Write a personal essay that uses a frame technique—the telling of a story within a story—to give the narrative a fixed structure. Tell the story of your memory, framed at the beginning and end with your current state of mind. What is revealed by the juxtaposition of this story embedded within another?  

Submissions Open for Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants

G&A: The Contest Blog
2.14.20

Submissions are open for the annual $40,000 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants, given to up to eight writers “in the process of completing a book-length work of deeply researched and imaginatively composed nonfiction for a general readership.” Administered by the Whiting Foundation, the grants are meant to provide writers with the time and resources required to research and compose “original, ambitious projects that bring writing to the highest possible standard.”

Only books under contract with a U.S. publisher are eligible for the grants. In previous years, the foundation also required that books be under contract for at least two years at the time of application; this restriction has been lifted. 

Using only the online submission system, submit a résumé, a statement of progress, and three sample chapters totaling no more than 25,000 words. Applicants must also include a signed and dated contract with a U.S. publisher, the original proposal that led to the contract with the publisher, a letter of support from the book’s publisher or editor, an additional letter of support, and a list of all sources of funding received for the book to date. All materials must be received by April 20. There is no application fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines and eligibility. 

In 2019, eight writers were awarded grants: Wil S. Hylton, Channing Gerard Joseph, Jim Morris, Kristen Radtke, Albert Samaha, Damon Tabor, Walter Thompson-Hernández, and Ilyon Woo. Previous grant recipients also include Jess Row, the author of White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination (Graywolf Press, 2019); Jennifer Block, the author of Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution (St. Martin’s Press, 2019); and Sarah M. Broom, whose debut memoir, The Yellow House (Grove Press, 2019), won the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction. 

Founded in 1963, the Whiting Foundation believes in “identifying and empowering talented people as early as possible in their creative and intellectual development.” In addition to the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants, the organization honors emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama with the annual Whiting Awards, and print and online publications with the annual Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes. 

Objects of Love

The Time Is Now
2.13.20

“Objects make love visible. They give us an archive, a timeline with clear milestones. They tell a story that would otherwise be almost impossible to see or even narrate,” Jenn Shapland writes in her Literary Hub essay “The Maggie Nelson Test for Lesbian Dating Success.” Shapland explores the value of shared and exchanged objects and artifacts between friends and lovers, with an emphasis on gifting books. Write an essay about a book that you gave or received from someone with whom you’ve had a significant relationship, perhaps at a particularly precarious turning point. Describe the book and set the scene, exploring what the exchange revealed about you and the state of the relationship.

Rebecca Solnit and Emma Watson

Caption: 

“I successfully avoided husbands and children and day jobs—those things can all really interfere with your productivity.” In an interview with Emma Watson, Rebecca Solnit discusses how she has managed to write so prolifically, the communication of information as a cultural phenomenon, and the themes in her first memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence (Viking, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Genre: 
Creative Nonfiction
Tags: 
Rebecca Solnit
interview
Emma Watson
Recollections of My Nonexistence
Viking
2020
Page One
March/April 2020
memoir

Roxane Gay Reads From Hunger

Caption: 

“I’ve always found that the things I find the most intimidating end up being the most intellectually satisfying.” At the Louisiana Literature Festival in 2019, Roxane Gay speaks about what moved her to write Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Harper, 2017), and begins her reading with a piece about loving Mister Rogers.

Genre: 
Creative Nonfiction
Tags: 
Roxane Gay
Hunger
Harper
2017
Louisiana Channel
Louisiana Literature Festival
2019
Mister Rogers

The Cabins

March/April 2020

The Cabins retreat was held from June 18 to June 22 in cabins on Tobey Pond in the Great Mountain Forest near Norfolk, Connecticut. The retreat offered collaborative, interdisciplinary presentations and group exercises led by and for attendees, including poets, fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and translators. Each participant was expected to lead an hour-long master class. The cost of the retreat ranged from $350 to $525 depending on lodging, and included some meals. Scholarships were available.

Type: 
RESIDENCY
Ignore Event Date Field?: 
yes
Event Date: 
April 28, 2025
Rolling Admissions: 
ignore
Application Deadline: 
April 28, 2025
Financial Aid?: 
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline: 
April 28, 2025
Free Admission: 
no
Contact Information: 

The Cabins, 19 Village Green, Norfolk, CT 06058. Courtney Maum, Executive Director.

Courtney Maum
Executive Director
Contact City: 
Norfolk
Contact State: 
CT
Contact Zip / Postal Code: 
06058
Country: 
US
Genre: 
Poetry
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction
Cross-Genre

Indiscernible Relations

The Time Is Now
2.6.20

In artist John Baldessari’s “Eight Soups: Corn Soup,” he borrows an image of a Henri Matisse painting of goldfish and writes the words “corn” and “soup” underneath it, while another piece includes a photograph of himself standing beneath a palm tree with a caption that says, “wrong.” In Deborah Solomon’s New York Times piece on Baldessari, who died earlier last month, she writes of a postcard the artist once sent from the Cincinnati Zoo to a friend: “The message bore no discernible relation to the photograph of the tiger cubs. In this way, it resembled his work. Text plus image and many possible paths between them.” As you go about your week, keep an eye out for readymade images—a photograph, a painting, an advertisement—and jot down words that immediately come to mind. Write an essay that uncovers, or makes discernible, the paths between the image and what it conjures up for you.

Georgia Center for the Book

Reading Venue

The Georgia Center for the Book is the state affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Center helped create and remains a major sponsor of the AJC Decatur Book Festival that draws 60,000 people to the city every Labor Day weekend. All events are free and feature author readings and talks.

Georgia Center for the Book
Tags: 
literary venues

Olivia Laing at Home

Caption: 

“The combination of gardening and writing works amazingly well for me. It’s such a nice antidote to writing books,” says author and critic Olivia Laing. In this NOWNESS video, Laing, whose most recent book is her first novel, Crudo (Norton, 2018), talks about the Cambridge home and garden she shares with her husband, poet Ian Patterson, and how her surroundings affect her creative life.

Genre: 
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction
Tags: 
Olivia Laing
Ian Patterson
NOWNESS
homelife

True of Voice

The Time Is Now
1.30.20

Can you imagine what the voice of a three-thousand-year-old mummy would sound like? Last week Scientific Reports published a study that describes engineering the voice of Nesyamun—an ancient Egyptian priest and scribe whose coffin’s hieroglyphs describe him as “true of voice”—by combining his 3D-printed mouth and throat with an artificial larynx and using speech synthesizing software. This week write a personal essay about the one long-ago sound you wish to hear, if you could engineer a way. Would you choose the voice of a loved one or important historical figure, the sounds of an extinct animal or bygone technology, or perhaps simply the everyday sounds of a different era?

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