Seán Carlson is working on his first book, a family memoir of migration. His essays have been published in Gulf Coast, the Irish Times, New England Review, the Oxford Review of Books, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere, and he was awarded a 2024 Elizabeth Kostova Foundation poetry fellowship in Bulgaria. Follow Seán’s writing at: https://seancarlson.substack.com/
There’s a temptation to look for narrative redemption, a sense of completeness, some reassurance that the trouble was worthwhile, that all will be okay.