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Judy Bolton-Fasman is the author of Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets. Her essays and reviews have appeared in major newspapers, essay anthologies, and literary magazines. She is the recipient of numerous writing fellowships, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

This month’s guest Non-Fiction by Non-Men interviewer is Jane Kokernak. She works and teaches scientific writing at Northeastern University. Her essays have published in Pangyrus, Bellevue Literary Review, Technology Review, Medium, and elsewhere.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Judy Bolton-Fasman, interviewed by Jane Kokernak appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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.

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.

The post Just Being in Litro Magazine! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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.

The post June 14th, 2011 on Past Ten Magazine! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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I first learned about Vince Granata’s memoir Everything Is Fine through my friend who is friends with one of Vince’s friends, and when I hopped on the phone with Vince, we naturally figured out we had yet another friend in common. Even though Vince now lives in Texas, he spent his 20s in the Boston area, where I have lived most of my life. Everyone knows everyone through someone else in Massachusetts it seems. It’s a small world.

It’s a small enough world that even before I read Vince’s searing memoir about the murder of his mother at the hands of his schizophrenic brother, I remembered hearing about the news story. I’ve long been someone interested in reading about the darker aspects of life, and Vince’s memoir might just be one of the darkest books I have ever read. There is nothing easy or light about reading Vince’s family’s story. And yet, while Vince’s book does not shy away from some of the hardest – the hardest? – things a family can grapple with, his memoir is one of the most empathetic, kind, and human works I have ever read. There is also a history of schizophrenia in my own family, and Vince’s book provided the nuanced and thoughtful approach to a devastating mental illness that is absent in so many pop culture narratives. I was thrilled to get the chance to speak with Vince and ask him about what it took to write this remarkable work.

The post Interview with Vince Granata on Full Stop! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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Those of you who knew me back in grad school know that my MFA thesis was a long, rambling 300+ page meditation on my family’s insurance agency and intergenerational trauma, grief, loss, and anxiety. One day I still hope I can rework that beast into a book of its own, but when a place like Evocations Review gives an excerpt of Over-Insured a home, it feels like a little piece of my heart has a place to rest finally. Thank you for publishing this essay, Kim Coates! I’m honored to be part of the first-ever issue of Evocations.

The post “Over-Insured” in Evocations Review! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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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.

For the full interview, see it on Fiction Advocate.
Published on April 9, 2018.

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Anya Yurchyshyn is the author of My Dead Parents: A Memoir, published by Crown in March 2018. Yurchyshyn received her MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University, and her work has appeared in Esquire, Oprah Magazine, N+1, Buzzfeed, Two Serious Ladies, Mod Art, Guernica, Elimae, and NOON. Yurchyshyn’s story “The Director” was included in Best Small Fictions of 2015. She lives in New York and teaches at Columbia.

On Wednesday, April 11, 2018 at 7pm, Anya Yurchyshyn and E.B. Bartels will be in conversation in an event at Newtonville Books in Newton, MA. If you are in the Boston area, come see Non-Fiction by Non-Men in real life!

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Anya Yurchyshyn appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist, The Farming of Bones, The Dew Breaker, Create Dangerously, and Claire of the Sea Light. She is also the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, Best American Essays 2011, Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2. She has written six books for children and young adults—Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, Mama’s Nightingale, Untwine—as well as a travel narrative, After the Dance. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 MacArthur fellow. Her most recent book, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, was published by Graywolf Press in July 2017.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Edwidge Danticat appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

Are you totally bummed because you think you missed your window to sign up for my Writing About Family class at GrubStreet? Well, don’t be! There is still time to enroll. The class now starts January 24 and runs through March 28: 10:30am-1:30pm on Wednesdays for ten weeks. 

Also, to clarify: the definition of “family” in this course is extremely broad. We will be looking at examples from writers who define family in all kinds of ways — from biological to adopted to chosen, from parents to children to friends, from human to non-human. This course will be helpful for anyone attempting to write nonfiction about people (or animals) they love or hate, but, for better or for worse, are bound to by some familial-feeling kind of force.

Sign up now!

The post There’s still time to sign up for Writing About Family! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.