Start With A Riddle, Not A Rationale
What do cinnamon, Stephen Jay Gould, and Kleenex all have in common?| The Recovering Academic
What do cinnamon, Stephen Jay Gould, and Kleenex all have in common?| The Recovering Academic
The following is a new chapter from a memoir in progress.| The Recovering Academic
The Kentucky Library Association recently invited me to give a talk at their annual conference in Louisville, which meets next week.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Notes from Hotshot: A Life on Fire| joshuadolezal.substack.com
A fire assignment in Canada flies off the rails| joshuadolezal.substack.com
I’m proud to be a Give Back Stack.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Back in April, when I was doing a little garden prep, I listened to an audio version of This Side of Paradise to distract me from the weeds.| The Recovering Academic
The following is a new chapter from a memoir in progress.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Why you're never cleverer than your reader| The Recovering Academic
Most of my content in 2025 is free, but I appreciate the support of readers who make my writing life possible.| The Recovering Academic
Most of my content in 2025 is free, but I appreciate the support of readers who make my writing life possible.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
I’ve been reading medical memoirs since 2001, and I’ve come to expect a certain narrative arc.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Most of my content in 2025 is free, but I appreciate the support of readers who make my craft series possible.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
If you watch streaming TV, you’ve likely internalized its formula for plot, how the opening scene introduces a murder or illness that the heroes spend the rest of …| joshuadolezal.substack.com
The following is a new chapter from a memoir in progress.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Why precision and soul are the heart of literary craft| The Recovering Academic
I’ve noticed a paradox in our digitally-addled age.| The Recovering Academic
The following is a new chapter from a memoir in progress.| The Recovering Academic
Joshua Doležal: Welcome back to The Recovering Academic Podcast.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Rebuilding a life and a writing practice after leaving academe. Click to read The Recovering Academic, by Joshua Doležal, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
A friendly reminder to subscribers new and old that my plan this year is to alternate craft essays on the first and third weeks of each month with reviews or interviews and longform essays.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Joshua Doležal: Welcome back to The Recovering Academic Podcast.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Imagine yourself at a coffee shop with a new friend.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Joshua Doležal: Welcome back to The Recovering Academic Podcast.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Today’s essay is part of a new series including me, Latham Turner, Bowen Dwelle, Michael Mohr, Dee Rambeau, and Lyle McKeany. In the past we’ve written about trust, fatherhood, recovery, work, and home| joshuadolezal.substack.com
A Conversation with John Pistelli| joshuadolezal.substack.com
A longform conversation with Samuél Lopez-Barrantes| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Tobias Wolff begins This Boy’s Life with an epigraph from Oscar Wilde: "The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has discovered." Few understand Wilde’s aphorism more keenly than memoirists, and I want to think a little about the inventions that constructing a narrative persona in nonfiction requires.| joshuadolezal.substack.com
Sap is running in the sugar bush, the ground is loosening with rain and warmth, and I’m soaking my first round of garden seeds. I have observed the rites of spring planting for most of my life, and I know of no more hopeful ceremony. There is always some dreaming involved, a little picture making about the patterns I’ll create with Black Magic, Winterbor, and Redbor kale. How I’ll train the Sashimi cucumbers up a trellis, so the gherkins can fatten in midair. How a white hibiscus might ...| joshuadolezal.substack.com
