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Community and Resistance: The Writing Process as an Antidote to Upheaval

“A whole civilization will die tonight.” This upsetting nugget was delivered to me during a bit of early-morning social media scrolling, and it may have..

Featured Essays & Reviews

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Craft in Conversation: Following the Scent of the Story with Hyeseung Song

Hyeseung Song demonstrates incredible love through truth-telling in her debut memoir Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl (Simon & Schuster, 2024). Docile explores Hyeseung’s..
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The Architecture of Care

Craft, Consciousness, and Ethical Form in Girlhood In Girlhood, Melissa Febos does not merely recount the experience of growing up female; she constructs an ethical..
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Mosaic: Craft as Discrete Infinity

I. The Writer’s Life Certain people tend to be good listeners. Writers, for example. The writer might hear how, when you swing the fence shut,..
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Changing the Script: A Love Letter to Baltimore

An Interview with Kate Crane, Author of What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane? Sometimes the algorithm works the way it’s supposed to. On an evening..
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The Odyssey of Recollection; or, What a Vampire Can Teach Us about the Craft of Memoir

You wouldn’t expect a show centered on undead, blood-drinking, immortal creatures of the night to be the perfect model for how to write personal narrative,..
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Craft in Conversation: Talking Femininity, Fragments, Frankness, and Form with Amy Berkowitz

Amy Berkowitz asks us what it means to be poetic. In her memoir Tender Points (Nightboat Books, 2019), they take the reader through a series..
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Writer-Teacher, Teacher-Writer? A Reflection from the Creative Nonfiction Classroom

Many writers earn their living doing something that isn’t writing. We have jobs that are writing-adjacent or that otherwise make use of our skills and..
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Between the Claim and the Designation

Criticism has long been imagined as a neutral sorting mechanism—a procedure through which the good is separated from the bad by something other than desire...
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Craft in Conversation: Melanie Hall Interviews Sarah Minor

Sarah Minor is breaking boundaries on the essay form. Her debut collection, Bright Archive, combines research, memory, interview, and unconventional visual elements in a wonderful..
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Truth and Vulnerability: An Annotated Interview with Lauren Westerfield

Lauren Westerfield is no stranger to the complexities of writing “the true story.”
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Speculation as Art: Mapping Possibilities to Tell Elusive Stories

A decade ago, I visited the Angel Island Immigration Station, the California port of entry where, between 1910 and 1940, Chinese immigrants were detained under..
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In Praise of an Agentive Woman

A review of Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free, a biography by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson “The status of womanhood, like the tides of..
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2025 Nonfiction Round Up

Last year, true’s editors and contributors offered up their favorite nonfiction books, articles, and podcasts consumed in 2024. We’re back with a fresh list of..
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Writing From Within the Experience: An Annotated Interview with Jeannie Vanasco

Jeannie Vanasco is no stranger to writing her way through the hardest of material. Her debut memoir, The Glass Eye (Tin House, 2017), was a..
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Cracking Open: Accessing Vulnerability as an Emerging Writer

One thing people don’t tell you about college is how quickly you have to get used to crying in public. In high school, I had..
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Body/Work: A Correspondence

Since we’d never met in person, I had to picture Richard taking notes, making observations as he walked around Brooklyn’s Cortelyou Road or maybe further..
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Memoir in the Margins

The dance between journalism and memoir is like two old friends reconnecting at a party—there’s an awkwardness, a curiosity, and an undeniable chemistry. When I..
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Historical Memoir for Our Times: Lessons in Testimony and Resistance

Writers might consider how integrating historical or philosophical frameworks can elevate personal suffering into universal moral inquiry.
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The Writing is the Permanence

I stopped writing in my journal recently. Stopped cold. I convinced myself that I could dictate instead, to try and be 2x more productive, maybe..
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Daily Photographs

On a slower pace, writing, and realizing what time brings.
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The Conversations We Weren’t Meant to Hear

"As both a nonfiction writer and novelist, I've discovered that these overheard conversations contain the most authentic speech, revealing their generational differences and cultural identities."
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Gathering Speed and Complexity

A Primer for Craft in Literary Journalism: "In this understanding, craft has a bigger job to do than to enthrall or entertain, to make a true story read like fiction or feel like fantasy. In this understanding, creativity is part of the journalism, working in service to ideas, not in service of earning a label. We can’t separate the literary from the journalism at all."
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Writing on Memory, Considering When To Do So

"All genres have a central expectation, and that of memoir is wisdom," writes Kutlay in this meditation on history, memory, and writing about ourselves.
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Circling Back: Return and Recursivity in Nature-Based Memoir

"All memory is a circling back to moments of earlier experience," writes Kayann Short as she evaluates the importance of return in ecobiography.
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2024 Nonfiction Round Up

Here's what our contributors and editors loved in 2024 and what they're excited for in 2025.
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The Endurance of A Classic

"While this fear is nothing compared to experiencing war, I worry that the circumstances will change me completely, as they changed him." - a 17-year old Kazakh student reflects on All Quiet on the Western Front
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Objects of Affection

"I can’t stop thinking about how objects hold me. How they alter the way I carry myself in a new room. Or hug me when surrounded by strangers."
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Obscured Truth: A Review of Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries

An exercise in experimentation, Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries started as lines from the author’s diary, which she then entered into an Excel spreadsheet, alphabetized, and..
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Love the Creature

“And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it…But this is for myself; my readers..
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How Many Rejections Does It Take To Get Published?

They said, “Ten percent of submissions get published.” I heard, “Nine out of every ten submissions gets rejected.” So, I decided I’d get one hundred..
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No Le Digas A Nadie. Don’t Tell Anyone.

“No le digas a nadie” is a threat that happens in almost every conversation I have with my mom. It’s synonymous with, “Don’t tell another..
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When the Arc is Too Small

When a narrative arc doesn't work, how do we find a structure for a work of narrative nonfiction?
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Prose and Connotations

"It seems like such a small thing to consider, with all of the other elements writers are asked to pay attention to, but I know I need to consider the specific connotations of my words," writes Jenny Hughes.
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That One Time A Writer Signed All My Books

How Andi Stout found a literary community and how it makes her a better writer: An Essay on Literary Citizenship.
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All of Us Ghosts

"This is how ghosts represent trans people. Cactus Country made me realize nonbinariness was a spirit that wanted me to notice it," writes August Owens Grimm in their review essay of Zöe Bossiere's new memoir.
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The Writing Life: How Teaching Helped Me Reclaim My Voice

Olga Katsovskiy explores getting over the writer's block she faced after her dad's death through teaching others to "find the question that needs to be answered."
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Meeting the Complexity of Grief

Pam Anderson shows how B.J. Hollars takes on the complex task of writing about grief without sounding cliche or trite in his memoir, Year of Plenty: A Family's Season of Grief.
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Truth, Shame, and Writing A Memoir

Jonathan Corcoran explores how shame and family secrets nearly prevented him from writing his memoir.
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What If I’m Right About Being Trans

Writer Rey Katz reflects on the importance of language in trans narratives in this review of Schulyer Bailar's book He/She/They.
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When the Writing Is the Grieving

After the death of her husband, Dominque Conway reflects on words, grief, and writing.
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Rewriting Your Code

College junior Aniya Carrington writes about what happens when you're forced to be someone you’re not in order to survive. 
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Whom Are We To Judge?

Michael Igoe explores writing about others and what it does to ourselves.
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Becoming Better Together: How I Help Students Magnify the Deeper Meaning of a Text

As a writer and teacher, Donna Lewis Johnson sees herself and her students as literary detectives, reading texts closely in order to notice the telling details that illuminate the characters, setting, and plot moments.
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Must I forget my first language to move beyond my past?

Parisa Saranj reflects on abandoning Persian, her first language, to write and think exclusively in English, both as a method of embracing her life in the US and abandoning her past in Iran.
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The Body as Home: Traversing Gender to Find Peace

A review of Krys Malcom Belc's The Natural Mother of the Child by Megan Reilley.
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Every Woman Keeps a Flame Against the Wind

An essay by Kristen Millares Young.
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Neighborhood Statistics

An essay by Nicholas Powers.
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I Am Not in My Body

An essay by Daisuke Shen.

Featured Interviews

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Redemption Through Re-Narration

Courtney Ann LaFaive’s second book, Follow the Signs: Searching for Linda Goodman, America’s Forgotten Astrology Queen, came out this spring through the University of Iowa..
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The Secret to Everything

[First Runner-Up 2018 Proximity Essay Prize] Here in the last slip of rural country near Raleigh, I drive slowly down a gravel road, unsure if I’m going in the right direction. The road gradually becomes dirt: two tire ruts divided by a hump of grass. Sparse rows of pine trees line both sides of the narrow road. I’m a social worker, and I’m making an early morning visit, a new referral to start the day. This one a possible suicide case—I hate suicide cases.
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Already We Are Less Than Ever Before

[Winner of the 2018 Proximity Essay Prize] Fereidoun M. Esfandiary hypothesized the sun was the heart of utopia. He changed his name to FM-2030 to mark the year he’d turn 100. Interviewed by Larry King, FM-2030 wears a heavy white robe and says his new name is “neat.
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Announcing the 2024 Proximity Prize in Personal Essay

We are thrilled to announce the winners of our 2024 Proximity Prize in Personal Essay. Daniel M. Lavery was the judge, and he told us,..
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Swim Lessons

[Runner-Up for the 2024 Proximity Prize] They checked our military IDs as they stood in camouflage outside our high school and slung M-16 machine guns around their shoulders. And their eyes lingered a little too long on shy, sophomore girls standing in line. 
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Main Category

Motherlove and Memory

[Winner of the 2024 Proximity Prize] Not much can prepare you for the day when you greet your mother and she pulls back in alarm. When you place your hand gently on her shoulder, look into her eyes, and she returns your gaze with suspicion and fear. When saying "It's me," fails to suggest a hint of familiarity. 

From the Pages of Proximity

sunrise behind cloudsR

Redemption Through Re-Narration

Courtney Ann LaFaive’s second book, Follow the Signs: Searching for Linda Goodman, America’s Forgotten Astrology Queen, came out this spring through the University of Iowa..
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The Secret to Everything

[First Runner-Up 2018 Proximity Essay Prize] Here in the last slip of rural country near Raleigh, I drive slowly down a gravel road, unsure if I’m going in the right direction. The road gradually becomes dirt: two tire ruts divided by a hump of grass. Sparse rows of pine trees line both sides of the narrow road. I’m a social worker, and I’m making an early morning visit, a new referral to start the day. This one a possible suicide case—I hate suicide cases.
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Already We Are Less Than Ever Before

[Winner of the 2018 Proximity Essay Prize] Fereidoun M. Esfandiary hypothesized the sun was the heart of utopia. He changed his name to FM-2030 to mark the year he’d turn 100. Interviewed by Larry King, FM-2030 wears a heavy white robe and says his new name is “neat.
An image of a wave crashing on a beach with an anchor in the foreground that is almost totally obscured by another photo that has been overlaid of an eel hiding in bright green seaweed.A

Announcing the 2024 Proximity Prize in Personal Essay

We are thrilled to announce the winners of our 2024 Proximity Prize in Personal Essay. Daniel M. Lavery was the judge, and he told us,..
This is a blue and green image depicting an obscure image underwater.S

Swim Lessons

[Runner-Up for the 2024 Proximity Prize] They checked our military IDs as they stood in camouflage outside our high school and slung M-16 machine guns around their shoulders. And their eyes lingered a little too long on shy, sophomore girls standing in line. 
This is an image of pink and orange tulips in full bloom in a field. The tulips are starting to wither at the end of the bloom cycle.M

Motherlove and Memory

[Winner of the 2024 Proximity Prize] Not much can prepare you for the day when you greet your mother and she pulls back in alarm. When you place your hand gently on her shoulder, look into her eyes, and she returns your gaze with suspicion and fear. When saying "It's me," fails to suggest a hint of familiarity.