10 posts published by Allison K Williams, Guest Blogger, Andrea A Firth, and Dinty W. Moore during September 2025| The Brevity Blog
By Allison K Williams How do you “show” when you just don’t know? First-person POV in both memoir and fiction demands emotional truth—but what happens when the main character doesn’t (or can’t) know what happened, yet you still need a powerful scene? Memoirists may need family stories, information from people they’re estranged from or who […]| The Brevity Blog
By Jessica Gigot I am currently working on a memoir about my experience of early motherhood. My oldest daughter just turned ten and in the midst of unpacking this transformational decade, where I learned to share my life and my body with three other human beings, I am again reminded that the hero’s journey limits […]| The Brevity Blog
By Rachel Greenley I begin my decompression on Thursday afternoons. By then, the COVID-19 vaccine messages have been written, approved, sent. The NIH grant messages have been written, approved, sent. The Medicaid funding speculation messages have been written, approved, sent. My own writing – my personal projects – have not been written. There is nothing […]| The Brevity Blog
By Molly Akin The advice is passed down like scripture: write from the scar, not the wound. Let the trauma settle before you place it on the page. What happens, however, when we consider an alternative? What if dipping into the well of our wounds––before they are healed, or even scabbed over––could be generative, curative, […]| The Brevity Blog
By Andrea A. Firth One of the gifts I gained from grad school* was learning how to read as a writer. I was immediately captivated and inspired by the iconic creative nonfiction writers we read: Brenda Miller, Bernard Cooper, Roxane Gay, Adrienne Rich, John McPhee—the list goes on and on. The discussions in craft classes […]| The Brevity Blog
By Ravi Bhaskar Don’t forget to like, comment and subscribe! God, how I hate that line. Every time I hear it, I immediately close the tab and flee to someone with more dignity. So when I launched my blog, I swore I’d never beg. Classy or die! My sign-off: If you liked this, please tell […]| The Brevity Blog
Brevity literary magazine celebrates its 80th issue with essays exploring the hawk outside a hospital window, the mathematic of decay, egg and parsley fritters, other people’s mothers, and more arresting moments from twelve amazing writers: Steven Church, Marji Alonso, Jeremy T. Wattles, Molly Akin, Heather Shaw, Richard Robbins, Toni Judnitch, Dana Wall, Heather Kindree Thomas, Sue […]| The Brevity Blog
By Cindy Sams Not long ago — just last month, in fact — I sent a piece to a well-respected Southern lit mag with the line “drunk as fiddler’s bitches” in the story. After acceptance, the editor marked it, wondering if I meant “britches.” Mortified, I panicked. How had I missed something so obvious? My […]| The Brevity Blog
By Rebecca Morrison I met Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the blockbuster Eat, Pray, Love, at a book event in DC last year. It wasn’t one of those quick “hello, sign my book” interactions. I arrived early, and there she was, this superstar literary figure wearing a cozy white sweater and holding her pink knit […]| The Brevity Blog
By Michele Cantos Garcia When I was still a new writer searching for my voice at writing workshops, I was overcome with a conviction that I should apply to artist retreats and fellowships. Earning …| The Brevity Blog
By Bernadette Geyer My writing projects spawn and multiply in various computer folders, or huddle clipped together on my desk topped with a Post-it note that says “For editing.” There are also doze…| The Brevity Blog
10 posts published by Guest Blogger and Allison K Williams during August 2025| The Brevity Blog
By Michele Cantos Garcia “I’m 70 and single again,” the glamorous actor-turned-writer read tenderly from her notes. It was her first time in a memoir class—and my first time teaching it—but she alr…| The Brevity Blog
By Diana Friedman In 1971, my mother published her first book—a Dell Pocketbook guide to employment for female liberal arts graduates. I spent my childhood watching her hunch over her typewriter, p…| The Brevity Blog
10 posts published by Heidi Croot and Guest Blogger during July 2025| The Brevity Blog
By Stephanie Mitchell I had been coaching a memoir writer for six months and my client was three-quarters done with the first draft when she told me she was quitting. It had been a difficult road—h…| The Brevity Blog
By Claire Polders I’m not a poet. I voiced this denial multiple times in my life and with complete conviction. It’s the first thing I told Alyson Shelton when she invited me to contribute to her “W…| The Brevity Blog
By Katie Rose Pryal Life doesn’t come to us as a complete story. It comes in pieces, or fragments—what I call “leftovers.” Like this: I stumbled over a crack in a sidewalk today, which remind…| The Brevity Blog
By Caitlin Wahrer When I checked out Master Slave Husband Wife, the biography of an enslaved American couple who emancipated themselves in 1848, I expected a history lesson. I did not expect suspen…| The Brevity Blog
By Allison K Williams & Jane Friedman A writer asked me, “Allison, why are memoirs so much harder to get published than fiction?” I took the question as fundamentally true—that memoirs are hard…| The Brevity Blog
By Laura Zinn Fromm A few days ago, one of my students emailed. She had read an essay I’d just published about my father—dead now 19 years but still giving me plenty of juice to write about. The es…| The Brevity Blog