End Notes: Absalom, Absalom! - Believer Magazine It’s 1997. Or maybe ’98. My father is still alive. I’m spending Christmas Eve alone. I forget why. I must have been nursing some wound I no longer remember. No, I do remember. I just don’t want to tal...

"I’m in grad school and living in a house on Rochester Avenue near where it feeds out to the Herbert Hoover Highway, and I’m on my couch in my underwear reading the opening pages of Absalom, Absalom!" Peter Orner @thebeliever.net www.thebeliever.net/end-notes-ab...

Red-eared slider with one flipper on small log with head out of water

Turtle pushing itself up on leaves and branches, half out of water.

Close up of turtle (head and neck) on leaves, facing camera.

A sunny, blue sky Sunday morning turtle visit. #turtles

Marcia Aldrich Marcia Aldrich Consent: I Remember I remember the spring of my freshman year at Wells College, while living in Main, I had set up my little Sears electric typewriter that my father had bought m...

"It had started years earlier, this readiness, this turn, on a wheel that rolled back through the choices I had made, one after another, and carried me forward to his office and made me take the hand he offered." Marcia Aldrich's sizzling #literaryessay americanliteraryreview.com/2026/04/17/m...

Me about 5 or 6 riding a Big Wheel and carrying some kind of flag I probably made (poorly)

Your instructor for Writing the Younger Self May 7 - May 28 (Thursdays 11 AM - 1 PM CST) Info here: jilltalbot.net/register/p/w... #writingclass #literaryessay #cnf #amwriting #flashessay

slat-back wood chair in blue finish in a room

Today's thrift: a Holsag Bulldog Chair for $7.49 (slowly adding seating to my writing room for small writing workshops and mini-readings) #thrifting #literaryessay #writing #reading

Postcard bundle of black and white postcards

One of Notre Dame

The back of one postmarked with writing

Postcards as a tabletop

Rainy welcome this evening to the postcards from Paris (1900-1908) I will use to make my next postcard table. Here’s the first one I made. #postcards #Paris

Of Nature, Art and Grace: On Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It turns fifty this year. Its author was a retired English professor from the University of Chicago who, at the point late in life when he began work on the bo…

I wrote my MA thesis on Redford's adaptation of Maclean's book & interviewed screenwriter, Richard Friedenberg, by phone. During our call, Friedenberg got another (call waiting). He came back on the line: "Well, speak of the devil. That was Bob!" @literaryhub.bsky.social lithub.com/of-nature-ar...

From the Sunday morning turtle visit #turtles #redearedsliders

Room with bookshelves and chair and lamp and desk with rug

My dog on chair looking out window

Writing room with Hallie #JackChi #DogsofBlueSky

Shoes on feet next to pair of dumbbells

What a difference in stability for #HIIT! Nike Free Metcon 6

Movie marquee with words: Coming Soon Syntax as Style

Learn how to create standout sentences, when and why to flash a fragment or two, and ways to elevate your prose with sentence variety, rhythm, lyricism, and emphasis for an immediate upgrade to your syntactical style! Virtual seminar April 19 jilltalbot.net/register/p/s...

Copy of Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize) (National Book Award Finalist)

“Living in grief is this: never being alone.” — @criveragarza.bsky.social What an incredible read. Wow.

Two turtles leaning on log. Looks like they’re holding hands.

Friendship #turtles

Thirty-Seven Theses on Time and Memory SVEN BIRKERTS <br> Why do we keep hold of certain things, and nothing of others? Now I can remember, with almost cinematic granularity, an afternoon when a veterinarian came to our fifth-grade class t...

"I’m trying to think when any memory worth remarking arrived. Did I have memories when I was ten years old?" Sven Birkerts ruminative essay on the past, memory, and our sense of self as a self. thecommononline.org/thirty-seven...

Sonic drive-in through rainy car window

Sonic Drive-in with raindrops reflecting on car window

Rainy morning at Sonic

A Map of My Mother (and Memory) — The Rupture Jill Talbot I take the Jefferson exit off I-30 East, looking for a payphone I know my mother used once. 1974, 1975. I was four or five, watching out the window from the backseat of our orange VW Bug....

My mother died eight years ago today. An essay I wrote when she had been gone "a little over a year." A year. Eight years. More years. It's all now. www.therupturemag.com/rupture/a-ma...

My Jack Chi dog curled up on chair & staring out window

Hallie thinking about things. #dogs #JackChi

Dream Girl - Prairie Schooner In Islam, dreams fall into three distinct categories: 1. Messages from God 2. Messages from the psyche 3. Messages from the devil While there are holy

"The weight of what I remember is a force strong enough to eject me from the world, but it is also the only road that returns me to it."
Jamila Osman, Winner of the 2025 Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest in the new issue of @prairie-schooner.bsky.social prairieschooner.unl.edu/excerpt/drea...

Nerve to Write | Disability Literature Nerve to Write | A Magazine for Disabled, Chronically Ill, and Neurodivergent Writers

Check out the incredible inaugural issue of @nervetowrite.bsky.social with its impressive list of contributors and AMAZING work in poetry, nonfiction, art, fiction, and hybrid work. #DisabilityLit #InvisibleIllness #NeurodivergentLit

www.nervetowrite.com

My dog baring teeth while chewing her stick

The joy of a chew stick.

Bluebonnets against blue sky and sun

Roadside Texas bluebonnets #wildflowers

Small desk-size table in a parking lot

Finished table with light blue sides and a postcard collage on top

View of table top postcards

Table with open drawer

Thrifted a great find & created a road/motel/Greyhound postcard table. #postcards #motels #roads

Class sold out! Next one drops May 7. Or check out other seminars/classes: jilltalbot.net/theessaystat...

Writing the "I" of the Personal Essay — JILL TALBOT An hour-long virtual seminar on how different writers think about the "I" and how to create the "I" your essay needs.

Consider: Taylor Swift's various personas throughout her career. Each album = a persona. Now consider album as personal essay. Join me for a 2-hour seminar Thursday, March 26 11 AM - 1 PM CST to learn how to craft your persona for your essay (collection) or memoir.
jilltalbot.net/register/p/p...

Turtle climbing over small log in water.

From this week's Sunday morning turtle visit! (Follow weekly on IG: www.instagram.com/jill.l.talbo...)
#turtles

Nonlinearity: Writing Beyond Plot and Chronology | Saturdays March 28-April 18 11 AM - 1 PM CST — JILL TALBOT How can we write in ways that move beyond narrative and chronology and still create momentum and meaning? A 4-week virtual class that helps you go from What Happened to What Might Happen In My Writing...

Beginning one week from today! 2 spots left. Let's go! jilltalbot.net/register/p/n...

Image of a nest against a black book cover. Rare Good: Essays on Art, Autism, and Astonishment by Steve Edwards

Thrilled to share that my new collection—Rare Good: Essays on Art, Autism, and Astonishment—is available for pre-order! It’s a book about belonging & becoming & finding our way together. I hope you will read it. ❤️

www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978...

Time & the Essay by Elisa Gabbert Elisa Gabbert on the ritual of the pit.

"Whatever experience or material you’re writing about, you’re also writing about the ritual of thinking certain thoughts . . . writing about the self and its repetitive encounters with [what you're writing about]." Elisa Gabbert on John Berger's essay, "Field"
www.clunyjournal.com/p/time-and-t...

“The glory of art is that it can not only survive change, it can lead it.” ~ Robert Redford

Jack Christian — Bennington Review

"To immerse oneself is to express a desire for that fullness, which was why I had gone on this trip."
Jack Christian takes readers on the road through the Southwest to check out immersive art (with his grad school buddy, Chuck). Great essay. www.benningtonreview.org/fifteen-chri...