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TABLE OF
CONTENTS
LEE GUTKIND • From the Editor
HILARY MASTERS • Chimera (read an excerpt online)
TOI DERRICOTTE • Beginning Dialogues
ROBERT WILDER • Crying in America (read an excerpt online)
LAUREN SLATER • Who Holds the Clicker?
ALLE C. HALL • The Brass Ring
LAURIE GRAHAM • L'Achat
HILDA RAZ • Looking at Aaron
MARK O'CONNOR • On Nicknaming
IRA BERKOW • Marvin Escapes Again (read an excerpt online)
KATHLEEN TARR • We Are All Poets Here
COVER TO COVER • Review of Books
ABOUT
THIS ISSUE
This issue of Creative Nonfiction features many writers whose work crosses the borders between literary genres, from poetry and fiction to creative nonfiction, and illustrates how the lines of division between writers may be disintegrating. The stories themselves also flirt with the idea of crossing boundaries - between life and death, between countries and cultures and languages, and between individuals.
Hilary Masters, a novelist, short-story writer, and essayist, pores through his writing notebooks and constructs a chimera out of fragments of writing he finds there, tracing the story of a man and a woman through the year and exploring how the shape we give to stories determines their meaning.
Ira Berkow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times, ventures into memoir to look back at several intersections between his life and that of his legally "incompetent" cousin Marvin.
In "Beginning Dialogues," poet and memoirist Toi Derricotte discovers that her mother's death has not ended their relationship; rather, as Dericotte realizes on her first visit to the grave site, in many ways her heart is only just coming to life.
Many of these essays reflect concern about family relationships: Alle C. Hall's "The Brass Ring" looks at the line between independence and marriage; Robert Wilder records his daughter's entry into the world; and Mark O'Connor discusses how naming creates belonging.
Finally, Kathleen Tarr's essay, "We Are All Poets Here," is all about Russian poets generally and Boris Pasternak specifically, but its title also reflects the theme of this issue. Creative Nonfiction helps bring disparate groups together. In this issue of the journal in particular, "We are all writers here."
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