High Country News has just posted the full text of my essay “Reconciling Family Narrative with Textbook History in Montana’s Big Horn Valley.” Though I really enjoyed researching and writing this one, it means even more to me now, as my grandmother recently passed away. She read an earlier draft, but I would have loved for her to see the piece in print. I miss her.
Category: News
The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre: An Anthology of Explorations in Creative Nonfiction
A few years ago my friend Sean Prentiss approached me about putting together an anthology focused on craft issues in creative nonfiction. As writers of essays and memoirs ourselves, as professors of creative nonfiction, and as former students of nonfiction greats Mary Clearman Blew and Kim Barnes, we knew all sorts of fascinating conversations were being had about the genre–yet there were very few texts that collected and forwarded these ideas. So, we got to work: we contacted writers we admired, we edited and offered advice, we set the essays next to one another, and now The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre: An Anthology of Explorations in Creative Nonfiction is on its way into the world! Here’s a bit more from the publisher’s website:
Though creative nonfiction has been around since Montaigne, St. Augustine, and Seneca, we’ve only just begun to ask how this genre works, why it functions the way it does, and where its borders reside. But for each question we ask, another five or ten questions roil to the surface. And each of these questions, it seems, requires a more convoluted series of answers. What’s more, the questions students of creative nonfiction are drawn to during class discussions, the ones they argue the longest and loudest, are the same ideas debated by their professors in the hallways and at the corner bar. In this collection, sixteen essential contemporary creative nonfiction writers reflect on whatever far, dark edge of the genre they find themselves most drawn to. The result is this fascinating anthology that wonders at the historical and contemporary borderlands between fiction and nonfiction; the illusion of time on the page; the mythology of memory; poetry, process, and the use of received forms; the impact of technology on our writerly lives; immersive research and the power of witness; achronology and collage; and what we write and why we write. Contributors: Nancer Ballard, H. Lee Barnes, Kim Barnes, Mary Clearman Blew, Joy Castro, Robin Hemley, Judith Kitchen, Brenda Miller, Ander Monson, Dinty W. Moore, Sean Prentiss, Lia Purpura, Erik Reece, Jonathan Rovner, Bob Shacochis, and Joe Wilkins.
Poem at About Place
My poem “The Fragments of the World Seek Each Other” is up at About Place, the literary journal of the Black Earth Institute. This issue, The Future of Water, was guest-edited by the amazing Debra Marquart; I’m excited to dig in and read!
Winner of the High Plains Book Award in Poetry
Super pleased to hear that Notes from the Journey Westward has won the 2013 High Plains Book Award in Poetry! Lots of great finalists and winners this year, including Louise Erdrich, Emily Danforth, and David Abrams, among others!
The Magic Barrel
This weekend, at the Whiteside Theatre in Corvallis, I’ll be reading with a whole host of amazing Oregon writers as part of The Magic Barrel, an annual fundraiser for the Linn Benton Food Share. There’ll be music, wine, poetry–it ought to be fun!
Tupelo Quarterly
The inaugural issue of Tupelo Quarterly is live, and, wow, it’s a stunner, beginning with editor Jessamyn Smyth’s foreword. I couldn’t be more please to have two poems, “Trotline” and “Eat Stone and Go On,” included, as well as a very generous editor’s feature, Spikes & Rivers: The Work of Joe Wilkins.
Top Ten Nod at Contrary Magazine
They’re celebrating their tenth birthday over at Contrary Magazine, and the editors are picking their favorite selections from the archives. Jazzed to see that poetry editor Shaindel Beers chose my poem “The Garage Sale Daze Meditations,” which is part of my manuscript-in-progress, for her best of list!
Review of Notes from the Journey Westward
Big thanks to Montana Poet Laureate Tami Haaland for this careful, perceptive review of Notes from the Journey Westward. You couldn’t ask for a better review than this:
This book is visionary. It is admirably consistent and meditative, relentlessly honest in its rejection of any romantic version of the West, and reverent before stars and morning, before the earth and the people who have survived on it. Joe Wilkins honors them by telling their stories.
Notable Nod in Best American Essays 2013
Pleased to see that my essay “Eleven Kinds of Sky,” which was originally published in Orion Magazine and built of snippets from my memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, earned a notable nod in Best American Essays 2013, edited by Robert Atwan and Cheryl Strayed.
“Say” at The Utne Reader
Just saw that my story “Say,” which originally appeared in The Sun Magazine and was reprinted in The Utne Reader, is now up at Utne’s website. I had fun with this one.
joewilkins.org 