For the full interview, see it on Fiction Advocate.
Published on December 16, 2021.

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Julia Ridley Smith is the author of The Sum of Trifles, a memoir in essays about the process of dispersing her parents’ belongings after their death, with each essay focusing on a different object. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, Electric Literature, the New England Review, and The Southern Review, among other publications, and her nonfiction was recognized as notable in The Best American Essays 2019. After earning her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, she worked for nearly twenty years as a freelance copy editor of academic books. She’s taught creative writing and literature at UNC Greensboro, as well as art-based writing workshops for educators and other adults at the Weatherspoon Art Museum. She is the 2021-22 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in her hometown of Greensboro, NC.

This month’s guest Non-Fiction by Non-Men interviewer is Ashley Trebisacci. She currently works as a Study Abroad Advisor at Brandeis University, and her writing has been published by The Journal of College Student Development and Sinister Wisdom. They live outside of Boston with their wife, who just so happens to be Julia’s literary agent.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Julia Ridley Smith, interviewed by Ashley Trebisacci appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

For the full interview, see it on Fiction Advocate.
Published on August 20, 2019.

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Terese Marie Mailhot is from Seabird Island Band. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Heart Berries: A Memoir. Her book was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for English-Language Nonfiction and was selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared Shelf Book Club PiCCK for March/April 2018. Heart Berries was also listed as an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Best Book of the Year, a Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, and was one of Harper’s Bazaar‘s Best Books of 2018. She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, the Electra Quinney Award for Published Stories, a Clara Johnson Award, and she is also the recipient of the Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature. She teaches creative writing at Purdue University.

This month’s guest Non-Fiction by Non-Men interviewer is Céillie Clark-Keane. Céillie lives in Boston, where she currently works as a managing editor. She has a Master’s in English Literature from Northeastern University, and her work has been published by Ploughshares online, Electric Literature, Bustle, and more.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Terese Marie Mailhot, interviewed by Céillie Clark-Keane appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

For the full interview, see it on Fiction Advocate.
Published on May 14, 2019.

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Mira Jacob is the author and illustrator of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations. Her critically acclaimed novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata First Literature Award, and long-listed for the Brooklyn Literary Eagles Prize. It was named one of the best books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions. Her writing and drawings have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Tin House, Literary Hub, Guernica, Vogue, the Telegraph, and Buzzfeed, and she has a drawn column on Shondaland. She currently teaches at The New School, and she is a founding faculty member of the MFA Program at Randolph College. She is the co-founder of Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn, where she spent 13 years bringing literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry to Williamsburg. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, documentary filmmaker Jed Rothstein, and their son.

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My grandmother, Genevieve Beckers Bartels.

Writing nonfiction is always personal, in my opinion. You are putting your thoughts, feelings, and point of view out there, even if you are hiding behind the safety of research or criticism. This essay that I published today on Electric Literature is, at its core, a book review, but it is also the most personal thing I have published to date.

Thank you for reading it, and for your thoughtfulness and your care with this subject matter. A special thank you to my editor, Jess Zimmerman, who helped me so much with shaping this piece and clarifying my ideas, and, of course, thank you to my dad who helped me with this essay, and with so many other things, more than he realizes.

But if you only take one thing away from this piece, it better be that you need to go out and buy and read Marin Sardy‘s book The Edge of Every Day ASAP!

The post “How I Stopped Being Afraid of My Own Brain” on Electric Lit appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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I am proud to have another piece up on Electric Literature today, but especially this essay because EVERYONE should read Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister. Not only is the book inspiring, it also helped me figure out some of my issues with my grandmother.

A big thank you to Jess Zimmerman, for publishing me again, and to Jaime Green, for all her editorial support/feedback/encouragement on this essay!

The post “‘Good and Mad’ Helped Me Understand The Woman Who Makes Me Angriest” on Electric Lit! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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I am so excited to have this piece up on Electric Literature today! In my three years interviewing writers for my Non-Fiction by Non-Men series on Fiction Advocate, I have learned many helpful things from these badass women, and I hope you all will, too.

The post “I Talked to 39 Women Who Write Nonfiction, and Here’s What I’ve Learned” on Electric Lit! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.