Recent excellent creative nonfiction – October 15


Six fantastic pieces ranging from prison memoirs to a hilarious list of grievances

Delayed a day by Canadian Thanksgiving but these are worth the wait. These writers are all new to me.

Here are six pieces of creative nonfiction that have stunned me in recent weeks

The Force of Objects in Summer by Tetman Callis in BULL: remembering being early to the scene of a terrible car crash as a teenager.

The Difference by Kenneth Andrus in Lit Hub: you have to scroll down to get to the piece – it’s on a page with another story, so it’s not as long as it first appears. It’s a terrifying account of drug use in prison

Elegy of an Eating Disorder By Lindsey in Your Impossible Voice: an anonymouns account of living with anorexia. Be warned, this one is intense and upsetting

Cooking Iftar by Ilari Pass in BULL — I’ve probably read this story 5 times, it’s so gorgeous and heartbreaking, about family and ritual and a lot mroe

Ashes to Ashes by Christine Powers in Frazzled Lit — about losing nearly everything in a housefire at a particularly difficult point in life

My Enemies, A—Z by Molly Young in The Paris Review. This had my crying with laughter:

When trying to speak a foreign language I am always catapulting myself out of a frying pan and into a fire. Last year, in Mexico, for instance, someone asked why I wasn’t speaking Spanish and I replied, “Because I’m afraid I will accidentally be rude”—except what I actually said was “Because I’m afraid I will accidentally become horny.”

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