death Archives - E.B. Bartels

“To the Iditarod Man” on Off Assignment!

E.B. Bartels — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 22:00:50 +0000

I am thrilled to share I have a new essay published in Off Assignment as part of their Letter to a Stranger series. Read “To the Iditarod Man” here, and also check out my “Behind the Essay” interview for the Off Assignment newsletter as well! Thank you so much to editors Colleen Kinder and Aube Rey Lescure for giving this essay a home.

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Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Kristin Keane

E.B. Bartels — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 21:45:20 +0000

For the full interview, see it on Fiction Advocate.
Published on April 13, 2022.

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Kristin Keane is the author of the memoir An Encyclopedia of Bending Time and the novella Luminaries. Her writing and research have or will appear in/at the Washington Post, New England Review, TriQuarterly, Electric Literature, and elsewhere.

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Just Being in Litro Magazine!

E.B. Bartels — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 19:32:06 +0000

It’s spring again, and I’m still here, still sitting, still inside. At my desk, I gaze out the window at sparks of green, glimmers of yellow and purple, as daffodils, crocuses, new grass make their way into the warming world. Spring makes me want to get out and move – to go for long walks, to travel to new places, to see old friends, to roll around in a meadow. But instead, I’m sitting still, because I know that is what I need to do to help myself and help others. Being still sometimes feels like giving up. Being still feels like acting helpless. Being still doesn’t feel like enough. I usually think of helping as an active gesture; the words “action” and “active” have the same root, the Latin verb for “do.” But sometimes, I’ve learned, you can take action by doing nothing. Sometimes you can help by simply being still.

I started writing this essay three years ago. it has gone through many iterations and it took me a long time to figure out what it really was all about, but finally now it is now up on Litro Magazine and I am so happy to have it out in the world. Click here to read it.

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June 14th, 2011 on Past Ten Magazine!

E.B. Bartels — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 22:26:36 +0000

Past Ten publishes stories by artists and writers who reflect on where they were ten years ago. This spring, I wrote about June 14th, 2011 — the last day I saw my Auntie Christine before she died. Click here to read. the short essay.

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Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Elizabeth Greenwood

E.B. Bartels — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 21:09:57 +0000

For the full interview, see it on Fiction Advocate.
Published on November 14, 2016.

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Elizabeth Greenwood is the author of Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she teaches creative nonfiction. Greenwood grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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Chuckie the Hamster: Dead Pet Chronicles

E.B. Bartels — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 18:36:56 +0000

For the full essay, see it on The Toast.
Originally published on December 3, 2014.

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In fourth grade, I was the new student in school. While I liked many of my classmates, I felt shy when it came to having people over to my house or accepting birthday party invitations. Only by the very end of the year had I begun to feel like I made a couple friends, including a sweet, quiet, freckly girl named Meredith, whom everyone called Meri. Meri and I became friends after a hypothetical question about our dream pets posed to the class by our teacher: we both said we would like to have a ferret. We bonded further when we realized we both drool a lot in our sleep. While neither Meri nor I ever got a ferret, at the end of fourth grade, Meri adopted an orange and white hamster named Chuckie from another classmate of ours. Chuckie was already a couple years old, which is well past middle age for a hamster, plus he had a hard life before he arrived in Meri’s warm, caring arms. Our classmate’s older brother liked to jump over the squirmy, scrawny fistful of fur with his skateboard. When our classmate decided that perhaps Chuckie would be happier living in a household without such traumas – a rodent heart attack couldn’t be far off if the skate tricks kept up – Meri took him in. Already strongly maternal at nine, Meri showered Chuckie with affection, and in no time at all, he had fattened up and calmed down: a fuzzy sphere with tiny, white hand-claws, shiny black eyes, thin brown ears. His favorite activity was rolling around on the floor inside a transparent blue ball.

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