Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Belle Boggs

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“When I would picture my life as a writer, I would picture myself sitting peacefully at a desk, with words and ideas and stories just drifting down into my brain.” For a performance with the Monti, Belle Boggs describes the transformation of her perspectives on writing, teaching, happiness, and California. Boggs’s debut memoir, The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood (Graywolf Press, 2016), is featured in “Nine More New Memoirs” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Teju Cole

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“To be a stranger is to be looked at, but to be black is to be looked at especially.” Listen to writer, photographer, and art historian Teju Cole read “Black Body” from his new essay collection, Known and Strange Things (Random House, 2016). Cole is featured in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine in “Love and Witness” by Kevin Nance.

Parnassus Books

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In this video, Ann Patchett and Karen Hayes, co-owners of Nashville’s Parnassus Books, celebrate the shop’s first anniversary and tell us five things they’ve learned about bookselling. Parnassus Books is featured in “Best-Selling Booksellers” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Marrow: A Love Story

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Elizabeth Lesser shares her hopes to inspire readers through her new memoir, Marrow: A Love Story (Harper Wave, 2016), “to bring life, and forgiveness, and joy” to our most important relationships. Marrow is featured in “Nine More New Memoirs” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Renee Gladman

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“The sentence was appealing, not only because it followed me from place to place, but also because it seemed to think about me. ‘How can I jog your memory?’ it seemed to ask.” In this video, Renee Gladman reads her work for the BathHouse Events Series at Eastern Michigan University's Creative Writing Program in 2008. Gladman’s new essay collection, Calamities (Wave Books, 2016), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Tableaux Vivants

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The Pageant of the Masters is a tableaux vivants—or “living pictures”—event held every summer at Laguna Beach’s Festival of the Arts in Southern California. The long-running tradition features hundreds of costumed volunteers who stand still for ninety-second intervals posing in elaborate re-creations of masterpieces of art. Write an essay describing the artwork—classical or contemporary—you would choose to “live” in. What would your role and pose be? Who would be your supporting cast of posers? What narration and music would accompany your tableau vivant?

iO Tillett Wright

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“I never intended to be an activist, and it just kind of very naturally happened because I saw something that was wrong that I cared enough to do something about it.” In this video for School of Doodle, artist, writer, and activist iO Tillett Wright speaks about his project “Self Evident Truths.” Wright’s debut memoir, Darling Days (Ecco, 2016), is featured in “Nine More New Memoirs” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

An Unlikely Story

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In this video, Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, speaks at the grand opening of his bookstore, An Unlikely Story Bookstore & Café, in Plainville, Massachusetts. Kinney speaks about opening his store in “Best-Selling Booksellers” by Lynn Rosen in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

A. A. Gill

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“I just like writing...the subject isn’t the point—it’s how you write, and it’s what you find to say about it, what you can glean from it, what you can dissect from it. That’s the pleasure in writing.” A. A. Gill, whose new memoir Pour Me a Life (Blue Rider Press, 2016), is featured in “Nine More New Memoirs” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about starting out as an artist, and his work as a journalist, columnist, and novelist.

Terry McDonell

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“I moved around a lot, and every place where I worked had its own narrative.” Author, editor, and screenwriter Terry McDonell talks about working in the publishing industry and the future of magazine publishing during his acceptance speech for the Magazine Editor’s Hall of Fame in 2012. McDonell’s new book, The Accidental Life: An Editor’s Notes on Writing and Writers (Knopf, 2016), is featured in “Nine More New Memoirs” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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