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Emergence.

ICYMI no. 023  |  May 2022

MEGAN FOSS

East of Everything

A visit to a former haunt allows a previously incarcerated person to connect her past and present selves

Jail was the genesis of my initial desire to move past the needle and the streets and the strange hands on my body. The heavy clanking of doors locking and the enclosed spaces gave rise to the fear that I might not be one of those who died young.

ESSAY  |  CNF #13, The Brain: A Nonfiction Mystery (1999)

JILL CHRISTMAN

Spinning

When Jill Christman’s long-dead first love walks into cycling class, her world spins

There was a time when I wouldn’t have believed. There was a time when I would have said there are things that happen and things that don’t, and we know the difference. People die and go away, for example. People die and are gone.

ESSAY  |  True Story #12 (2018)

IRA SUKRUNGRUANG

The Guggenheim Fellowship Career (Non-)Narrative Essay

In the stories that make up a writing life, the most interesting plotline is not achievement but process

When I was awarded the Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Writer’s Center in Bethesda (2011), a friend asked me what emerging means. I told him I didn’t know. I told him I had followed the fellowship guidelines, and according to the guidelines, I qualified. He asked me how they chose winners. I told him I didn’t know. Probably a panel of judges. Probably the quality of work. He told me he thought I had already emerged.

ESSAY  |  CNF #68, Risk (2018)

ERICA BERRY

Beasts among Us

Searching for the roots of a legend in Southern Wisconsin, the epicenter of werewolf sightings in the US

How many of our stories come from our struggle to make sense of the strange? We turn to physicians, we turn to priests, we turn to the weak tool of our watery eyes. After all, it is one thing to diagnose the man who thinks he has grown claws. But how do we diagnose the man who thinks he has seen another man’s claws?

ESSAY  |  True Story #13 (2018)

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BRET LOTT

Against Technique

How the process of writing enables us to uncover big truths about ourselves

Once one gives up these notions of knowing a thing or two—all one’s prejudices about the world—one is left with a new world, which is, of course, and paradoxically, the same old one.​​ Yet now it’s new terrain, undiscovered, left to this new explorer, the one who knows nothing and who now, armed with this ignorance, stupidity, and tendency to stare, sees things newly and becomes, again if he is lucky, “one on whom nothing is lost,” to quote Henry James’s old line.

ON CRAFT  |  CNF #17, “Between the Lines” (2001)

ANNE McGRATH

Behold Invisibility

Considering steam and other unstable presences in Manhattan

Everyone in Manhattan seemed to be preparing for the starring role they hoped to play in their own lives. As a social worker, I saw people build new selves out of whatever indestructible raw material they contained. Their transformations were predicated on loss—of group affiliations, home, family, personal identity, or sense of self.

ESSAY  |  CNF #77, “Resilience” (2022)

TINY TRUTHS #tinytruth

@BRVogt: I watched a pair of geese in a busy parking lot mosey around, stand up to cars, drink from puddles, and chill too close to the curb. One hobbled as it walked. We all share the same, daily impulse to make it work, to keep going, to stand with someone even if alone. 

6:29 PM · Apr 2, 2022

@aubswrites: After a long winter, we walk on the slushed sidewalk. My dad is visiting Pennsylvania from Mexico. I miss home, I miss him even though he’s next to me. He says, “La cobija del pobre,” the sun is a poor man’s blanket. We walk through the slush, the sun melting ice. 

12:22 PM · May 3, 2022

@anikawriter: On the edge of his seat like the music will carry him away, the gray-haired man with the huge grin is bopping out of time with the beat. Oblivious to his lack of rhythm, he whoops and claps as if the drums, piano, saxophone are playing just for him. Maybe they are.

11:16 AM · May 4, 2022

Thanks for reading

We believe that true stories based on real-world experience are one of the most powerful tools humans have for communicating information, fostering empathy, and changing ourselves, our culture, and the world. This month’s ICYMI collection was curated by Karin Killian.

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