Issue 75 / Spring 2021
75 / Celebrating a Milestone
Revisiting some of our favorite work from the past 10 years
This milestone issue features some of our favorite prize-winning essays, by contributors including Brian Doyle, Judith Kitchen, Joe Fassler, Sonya Huber, and Emily Bernard. These curious, beautiful, nuanced stories about everything from surviving lightning strikes to the relief of solving medical mysteries consider the many perils as well as the tremendous power of living in a body.
Plus, brief excerpts from some of the phenomenal interviews we’ve published over the years, with advice and reflections on craft from writers including Dave Eggers, Leslie Jamison, Patricia Hampl, and many others.
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Read this issue nowTable of Contents
What’s the Story #75
"One of my reasons for starting Creative Nonfiction was to make the genre seem more legitimate and to secure its place on serious bookshelves"Dave Eggers on the importance of talking to strangers
"I interview the driver every time I get in a taxi, and it always yields interesting results"Sensualiterature
The scratching and hammering and tapping of writingThe Same Story
Two women, pregnant at the same time by the same manLeslie Jamison on the usefulness of cliché
“When experiences are common—universal, even—you can still find language for them that illuminates them in a new way”Wait Times
Slipping through the cracks in the emergency roomSheri Fink on blending science and narrative
"I feel like I bring that same investigative approach that I did to the lab to investigative journalism."Monsters
Anatomical specimens from a different era haunt a young physician's imaginationNo One Lives Here
We’re sorry; we’re currently unable to make this work available online.Cheryl Strayed & Elissa Bassist on how they measure success
“Humility is about moving forward, doing the work, seeing what comes after you put the time in”Black Is the Body
Black? Brown? African American? When your children inhabit a world you could never have imaginedErik Larson on the joys of digging through archives
"You never know what you’re going to find in the next folder."Secret Museums
Our porn, ourselvesRecorded Lightning
We’re sorry; we’re currently unable to make this work available online.In the Grip of the Sky
The constellations of joint pain that announce storm fronts and hurricanesElizabeth Kolbert on the terror of being at the mercy of events
“Telling people what to do is beyond my purview. My obligation is to report on what is”The Walk Home
A complicated flirtation with an older neighborPatricia Hampl on what makes a memoirist
“My fundamental instinct remains a sense of wonder, a luminous amazement at existence”Any Given Day
How can we measure the time remaining?