Reflections on Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, (Auto)Biography, Life-Writing, and the Essay
29 Dec 2011 at 09:31
Julija Šukys
Biography, Contests and Prizes, Countdown to Publication, Editing, Epistolophilia, Funding, Journeys, Libraries, Poetry, Rejection, Research, Residencies and Fellowships, SheWrites, Uncategorized, Writing, Yiddish
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I couldn’t have written Epistolophilia without writers’ grants and research fellowships. A number of different arts agencies and institutions — these are listed in the Acknowledgements to my book — helped me pay for plane tickets, get paper for printing, buy time for writing, and (perhaps [...]
03 Aug 2011 at 18:43
Julija Šukys
Biography, Eastern Europe, Epistolophilia, Friendship, Libraries, Lithuania, Ona Šimaitė, Poetry, Publishing, Research, Translation, Uncategorized, Vilnius, Writing
Janina Degutytė. Poezija/Poems. Trans. M.G. Slavėnas. Lithuanian Writers’ Union, Vilnius, 2003. I’ve been thinking about the issue of obscurity lately, because I’ve wanted to write about a book that’s been sitting on my desk for months now. It’s an English translation of the work of a Lithuanian poet, Janina Degutytė (1928-1990). She wrote her best [...]
On the second morning of last weekend’s writers’ retreat, I woke up thinking about A.’s missing paragraph. The one that got lost before it was written into the poem she read on Saturday. How had she known it was supposed to be there in the first place, I wondered. A. has a kind of serenity [...]
29 Mar 2010 at 09:39
Julija Šukys
Grad School, J. Edward Chamberlin, Journeys, Language and Multilingualism, Life-blood, Poetry, University of Toronto, Writing
J. Edward Chamberlin, If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?: Reimagining Home and Sacred Space. Pilgrim Press, 2003. Ted Chamberlin was one of my professors at the University of Toronto, and if you read his book, you’ll understand what a good teacher and storyteller he is. It weaves together tales about cowboy culture, [...]
12 Mar 2010 at 07:50
Julija Šukys
Life-blood, Life-writing, Maggie Nelson, Marketing, Poetry, Writing
Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder. Soft Skull Press, 2005. I read Maggie Nelson’s book after a Temple University professor recommended it to me as an example of writing that, like my own, was hybrid in form. Jane tells about the author’s search for traces of her aunt who was brutally raped then killed in the [...]
