About the Author
Ordinary People Writing Extraordinary Stories
Judith Kitchen, author of “Haworth”
As publisher of State Street Press-which produces a well-known poetry-chapbook series-and a literary critic whose bi-annual reviews of new poetry appear in the Georgia Review, poet Kitchen brings to creative nonfiction her experience with poetic stanzas, which she says allows her to shift quickly from one direction to another.
She describes her essay, “Haworth,” as “an exploration in time and memory.” In “Haworth,” she says, she attempts to reflect her vision of the dynamic relationship between experience, memory and perception.
“What I was trying to do was to get three kinds of history together-the history of place; my own history, a present-tense moment; and a history of how the authors [the Brontës] saw the place, or might have seen it.”
Kitchen thinks memory is a central issue in much creative nonfiction being produced today, and predicts the genre will only grow, and that readers’ questions about the genre’s name will become moot.
“There’s been an influx of memoir by relatively ordinary people-by people whose lives are not necessarily of interest, but the writing of the lives is of interest,” she says. “In five years, no one will be asking the question about the genre’s name because it will have defined itself more. In 10 years, the reading public will be as receptive to creative nonfiction as it is now to a strict, straight nonfiction book.”