In his 2017 piece for @AssayJournal, @taybro1987 breaks down Brian Doyle’s "Dawn and Mary." It’s a masterclass in powerful minimalism.
Read the full craft analysis here: buff.ly/CUFRqMT
📸 peiqi Gu on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #AssaySpotlight #SandyHook #EssaysThatMatter #CreativeNonfiction #LitMag
"Write what you aren’t yet ready to speak," says Christine Cusick in our 2021 To Wit Flash interview.
This is a brief but wonderful deep dive into how we map our lives through prose. 📝
Read the flash interview here: buff.ly/VS27wis
📸 Nik on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #AssayInterviewProject
How does Gen AI make meaning for CNF students? Myers and Ballenger make the case for moderated AI in the classroom in Assay 11.2
Read the article here: buff.ly/BR0SmZ3
📸 Jaime Gusmao on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #Pedagogy #Nonfiction #EssaysThatMatter #TeacherResources #FreeTeachingResources
In today's #throwback, Colleen Hennessy dives into the role of Irish nonfiction in the #RepealThe8th campaign, highlighting how writers like @sineadgleeson & @TaraFlynn broke decades of silence.
Read the article here in Assay 7.1: buff.ly/mHVBX1V
📸 New York Public Library
#AssayJournal
What is a "rightly shaped" vehicle for personal truth? Natalie Villacorta explores the rise of #autofiction as the ultimate tool for women writers in Assay 6.2, pointing to Virginia Woolfe, Sheila Heti, and others as example. 📖
Read more here: buff.ly/UWg7gki
📸 courtesy of Canva
#AssayJournal
Madhushree Ghosh's memoir "Khabaar" is a beautiful book that blends and braids the global journeys of South Asian food through immigration, migration, and indenture. 🍽️
Read her 2023 Interview Project chat here: buff.ly/KdN1jTe
#AssayJournal #Khabaar #AssayInterviewProject #memoir #food
Kelly K. Ferguson argues in Assay 7.2 that the Dark Side has merit-- while corporate structures help us manage a digital shift, it's our quirks and life experiences that students actually need in the classroom. 😈⚔️
Read here: buff.ly/PQEuFTN
#AssayJournal #MondayPedagogy #InstructionalDesign
What do we impose on our work in the revision process after a draft is complete? Chris Thornton examines this in Assay 2.1's "Ted Kooser's "Hands": On Amobae, Empathy, and Poetic Prose ." 🪼
Read the article here: buff.ly/5GCmHYE
Photo by David Clode
#AssayJournal #ThrowbackThursday #Nonfiction
Today's Interview Project highlight focuses the spotlight on Black queer, femme power. ✊🏾🌈
Cicely Belle Blain is a Black/mixed, queer femme, and their 2020 debut "Burning Sugar" exposes colonization and its impact on Black bodies.
Read the interview here: buff.ly/3IvOyHH
#AssayJournal #interview
"Armed with a pack of blank note cards, I begin to copy quotations...my thoughts fall into a succession of kaleidoscopic patterns, as various as the voices around me," writes Jacqueline Doyle in Assay 4.1.
Read it here: buff.ly/V4fHFuw
📸 Kelsy Gagnebin (Unsplash)
#AssayJournal #Pedagogy #Nonfic
Today's Spotlight is Floreani's wonderful "Sewing and Telling" from Assay 6.1. Floreani "articulates the potential subversions of our cultural assumptions about what we make—or don’t." 🪡
Read it here: buff.ly/G99lclQ
📸 by Art Institute of Chicago
#AssayJournal #AssaySpotlight #Nonfiction #CNF
We're thinking about flash today--flash interviews, that is! Joni Tevis covers a lot of ground in this quick chat from 2021.
Read today's interview here: buff.ly/9we1mNP
📸 courtesy of jonitevis.com
#AssayJournal #AssayInterviewProject #CNF #EssaysThatMatter #LitMag
Today's pedagogy comes from Terry Thaxton in Assay 5.1, who revolutionizes her workshop by letting her students go wild and create their own workshop.
Read today's pedagogy article here: buff.ly/trjaTaj
📸 by Callum Eddings on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #pedagogy #restructuing #remake #workshop
Our friends are open for submissions! Fourth Genre's Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize and Multimedia Essay Contest are both now open! Submissions are due by April 15. Head to fourthgenre.org for more info
📸 by @fourthgenre
#AssayJournal #Nonfiction #FriendsOfAssay #Contest
For today's Wednesday Spotlight, let's take a look at Issue 2.2, where Jie Liu, a Chinese fiction writer with four books out for children, examines the impact of the video essay in "Thirteen Canada Geese." 🪿
Read it here: buff.ly/wCVJyWh
📸 by Aboodi Vesakaran on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #videoessay
In our 2025 interview with Laura Julier, former editor of Fourth Genre, Laura speaks about her debut memoir, "Off Izaak Walton Road," her literary touchstones, and more from a book steeped in loss and how to walk alongside it.
Read the interview here: buff.ly/XAKvo70
#AssayJournal #Interview #CNF
In our most recent issue of Assay with Amy Garrett Brown's "Teaching the Researched Family...", Brown reimagines the family profile essay & shows how she taught her students to mine their histories and cultures for a researched family profile.
Read it here: buff.ly/T1vGX6g
#AssayJournal #CNF
this weekend bootcamp focused on the ethics of memory in nonfiction looks to be a blast!
3-session weekend Online, Fri 2/27 3-5p PT/6-8p ET + Sa-Su 2/28-3/1 11a-1p PT/2-4p ET.
Registration link: buff.ly/zF4X1hJ
📸 by @caravanwriterscollective
#AssayJournal #FriendsofAssay #bootcamp #nonfiction
For today's #ThrowbackThursday, let's journey back to the time of the Walkman & investigate the quotidian with "Containing the Lives of Ordinary Things" from Assay 4.2.
Read it all here: buff.ly/KJKkfuL
📸 by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #throwbacks #quotidian #nonfiction
In his piece for Assay issue 8.2, Michael Cox explores a masterclass in how a single sentence and a deleted paragraph can change the entire soul of a story.
Read the full article here: buff.ly/9AhSeL4
Photo by Foto Pettine on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #AssaySpotlight #LiteraryCriticism #Nonfiction
For Kathryn Nuernberger, research is baked into her writing practice and ritual, and she encourages other writers to embrace this in today's Interview Project highlight.
Read the full conversation here: buff.ly/Wb9vmvb
📸 by by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #AssayInterviewProject #CNF
Let's revisit Erin Fogarty Owen’s essay “How to Write Well About Death” from Assay issue 10.1. Owen offers tools like the “CPR Method” to help authors connect with readers. 💀
Read the complete article here:
buff.ly/R6Xpw5C
Photo by Ron Szalata on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #ThrowbackThurs #CNF
In Assay 2.1, Daniel Nester interrogates his personal relationship with the term "working class memoir," ultimately finding his own understanding of what it means to be a "straddler memoirist."
Read the full article here: buff.ly/hU60Gm6
📸 by Laura Fuhrman on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #Spotlights
This week we’re pulling from the archives with an interview of Sumana Roy, conducted by Sayantani Dasgupta.
Read the complete interview here:
buff.ly/aYMDNvX
📸 by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #AssayInterviewProject #Interview #NonfictionBooks #EssayBooks #CreativeNonfiction
We're salivating over Mike Catron's "There’s No Such Thing as Too Much of
Jason Sheehan’s “There’s No Such Thing As Too Much Barbecue”:
A Pedagogical Discussion" from Assay 8.1.
Read it here: buff.ly/90UaeRm
📸 by Emerson Vieira on Unsplash
#AssayJournal #Pedagogy #Nonfiction #EssaysThatMatter
Looking for the perfect rainy day activity? Got a new reading list you're excited to try out w/ your students? Consider staying in and submitting to Assay! 🌦️
View our full submission guidelines and submit your work here: buff.ly/5IAc4Qz
#AssayJournal #Nonfiction #OpenSubmissions #Pedagogy
For today's Friends spotlight, we're spotlighting The Palisades Review, a journal founded in 2022 & currently open for nonfic submissions of 1000 words or less.
Head to their website at buff.ly/BikJD8q to learn more!
📸 Palisades Review
#AssayJournal #LitMag #OpenSubmissions #community #nonfiction
For today's Throwback we're taking lessons from Brian Doyle's uncertainty and Ana Maria Spagna's astute observations in "On 'How We Wrestle is Who We Are' from Assay 4.1. 🫀
Read the full article here: buff.ly/IaYVIuc
#AssayJournal #ThrowbackThursday #Nonfiction #analysis #craft
This week we are pulling from Assay 3.1 for today's article spotlight. Written by Lynn Z. Bloom, "The Great American Potluck Party" draws upon a holiday tradition for metaphor & multiple sources when defining the essay.
Read Bloom in full here: buff.ly/qmVbgIA
#AssayJournal #AssaySpotlights #CNF
"The artistry and the magic happen in the selection and arrangement of the materials."
-Donovan Hohn, on comparing Joseph Cornell boxes to nonfiction essays
Read Donovan's full 2020 full interview here: buff.ly/pf3yxUk
📸 lucidfrenzy.blogspot.com
#AssayJournal #AssayInterviewProject #Interview
