Reflections on Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, (Auto)Biography, Life-Writing, and the Essay
19 Jan 2012 at 04:22
Julija Šukys
Academia, Algeria, Archives, Biography, Catholicism, Children, Christianity, Countdown to Publication, Creative Nonfiction, Domesticity, Eastern Europe, Editing, Epistolophilia, Grad School, Journeys, Libraries, Lithuania, Mothering, Ona Šimaitė, Paris, Research, Residencies and Fellowships, Russia, Saints, SheWrites, Siberia, Silence is Death, Tahar Djaout, Uncategorized, Writing
This is Who-Man. My son and I invented him over breakfast this morning. Who-Man is a superhero whose arch-enemy is a many-eyed monster called “Crime.” Who-Man wears a bumpy suit (as you can see in Sebastian’s rendition of him above). The suit can shoot fire, but our hero rarely has to use this weapon. He [...]
28 Dec 2010 at 10:37
Julija Šukys
Algeria, Alternate Economies, Letters, Literary Pyramid Scheme, Writing
A while ago, I posted a call for volunteers to step forward to help me with a literary experiment. I described a letter I received that invited me to become a member of an informal book club. It went on to outline a kind of literary pyramid scheme, whereby I would send out one book [...]
My thanks to Mouloud Belabdi, who writes beautifully on his blog, “Chroniques de Montréal,” about the Algerian writer Tahar Djaout, assassinated in 1993. Djaout was the subject of my first book, Silence is Death. How pleased I was to read Belabdi’s description of my book: Son livre est une méditation constante sur la mort, la [...]
26 Mar 2010 at 08:56
Julija Šukys
Algeria, Biography, Journeys, Research, Silence is Death, Tahar Djaout
I recently came across an article referring to my book, Silence is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout, in El Watan, a major Algerian newspaper. The piece’s author, Benhouna Bensadat Mustapha, writes about the Algerian national hero, Emir Abdelkader (or Abd El Kader), the Iowa town of Elkader that was named for him, [...]
Assia Djebar, Algerian White. Translated from the French by David Kelley and Marjolijn de Jager. Seven Stories Press, 2000. Several years ago, a few colleagues and I invited the Algerian author Assia Djebar, who was in Toronto for the International Writers’ Festival, to dinner. We were in the process of putting together a literary anthology [...]
10 Mar 2010 at 08:53
Julija Šukys
Algeria, Anne Carson, Anthropology, Archives, Assia Djebar, Biography, Creative Nonfiction, Exile, Journeys, Ona Šimaitė, Ona Šukienė, Paris, Research, Russia, Siberia, Virginia Woolf, Writer's block
A writer friend of mine asked me recently how I keep going when things aren’t going well, and what I do when I become blocked. The most useful thing I do when I feel empty is read. I turn to authors whose work I want to emulate: Virginia Woolf, Anne Carson, Assia Djebar, Joan Didion, [...]
