According to the Purdue Online Writing Lab, the braided essay is “broken into sections using medial white space, lines of white space on a page where there are no words (much like stanzas in poetry), and each time there is a section break, the writer moves from one ‘thread’ to another.”

I find this definition limiting, especially due to the fac…[Read more]

(Similar to Chloe, I had trouble finding information about the cultural essay – all there seems to be is a short blurb on personal cultural criticism that Chloe used in her blog post already. But I think she did a […]

This is a question I have been asking myself a lot lately.

This semester, I’ve taken on several projects which have necessitated a lot of self exploration. Through this exploration, I’ve been forced to come […]

When you search “Biomythography” on internet search engines, the first result that comes up will say it is a term coined by Audre Lorde to describe her book Zami. There isn’t much variance in the subsequent resul […]

The difference between lyric journalism and journalism is a component that allows for lyric journalism to be contemplative about the “bigger picture” and come to some kind of conclusion about the components of life. For example, it’s the difference between saying that the Romanticism Movement was “was an artistic, literary, musical and…[Read more]

The term “lyric journalism” is a rather fresh term in the world of creative non-fiction, and like other subgenres, carries with it controversy regarding what comprises “fact” and “fiction.” Creator of the term, P […]

Christina Crawford, adopted daughter of the late Academy Award-winning actress Joan Crawford, published a memoir about her experience growing up with a woman she portrayed to be emotionally and physically abusive. […]

I’ve just read about the controversy surrounding Lena Dunham’s essay collection, “Not That Kind of Girl” which was released in fall of 2014. To outline, Dunham had written in great detail about the personality characteristics and appearance of an assailant in an alleged college sexual assault, named Barry. She wrote of him as Oberlin’s “resident…

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We’re all aware of the popular Netflix drama, Orange is the New Black, but how many people were interested in the real memoir by Piper Kerman, which the series is based on?  If you look at the book’s sales af […]

“In her essay ‘The Pain Scale,’ Eula Biss uses the form of the pain scale—which attempts to measure one’s pain on a scale of 0 to 10—as a way to structure a highly complex piece that explores not only the na […]

“The standard non-fiction writer’s voice was like the standard announcer’s voice… a drag, a droning…”

“There was no ‘movement.’ There were no manifestos, clubs, salons, cliques; not even a saloon where the […]

Returning to Albany for a job interview this past Friday put me in the unfortunate position of having to miss Kate Daloz’s reading. This blog post, reflecting on excerpts from Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism, see […]

Lauren’s Slater’s memoir, “Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir”(2000), is probably the most frustrating piece of creative non-fiction I have read to date. But has Slater effectively toed the line between fact and fiction […]

In Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” we read a powerful character who has reckoned with her environment in a rather unique matter.  In outlining the many sickening acts of racism she has faced throughout h […]

Jorge Luis Borges’ The Zahir plays with fact and fiction in very interesting ways. First of all, the story is written from the first person, and the narrator identifies himself as Borges. Herein lies the first q […]