confessional
-
Getting Personal
In response to Slate’s viral article about the rise of the “harrowing personal essay,” prominent editors from different publications weigh in on the importance of confessional writing, reasons for its gender divide, and the publishing process behind it.
-
An “I” for an “I”
For a growing number of essayists, memoirists, and other wielders of the unwieldy “I,” confessional has become an unwelcome label—an implicit accusation of excessive self-absorption, of writing not just about oneself but for oneself. Over at the Atlantic, Leslie Jamison argues that personal…
-
Shock and Awe
There’s a misconception about what is truly shocking – that the shocking is the purely explicit. It seems to me that’s easy, and it’s been done in literature for centuries. What’s problematic, the real way to be shocking, is to…
-
Women Speaking Up
For Slate, Amanda Hess reports on a boom in the publication of personal essays about women’s issues like rape, abortion, or an eye-poppingly grotesque parasite infection that we’d rather remain ignorant of: These stories are emotionally electric, politically relevant, and powerfully…