Inside Personal Essay

Inside Writing

In season two, episode seven of Gotham Writers' Inside Writing, host Josh Sippie conducts a panel discussion with Hobart editor Aaron Burch and writer Nina Boutsikaris. They discuss how to get to the point of an essay, the differences between personal essay and memoir, and how to make your essay better in revision.

Links mentioned in the show:

From Nina, here's a link to her personal website: http://www.ninaboutsikaris.com/

From Aaron, here's a link to his personal website: https://www.aaronburch.net/

as well as links to the two literary magazines he's editor of—

Hobart: https://www.hobartpulp.com/
Hobart After Dark (HAD): https://www.havehashad.com/about-had

Here's the Tim Krieder essay, "Reprieve," Aaron mentioned a couple times: http://thenervousbreakdown.com/tnbnonfiction/2012/09/excerpt-from-we-learn-nothing-by-tim-kreider/

And here's a pretty great interview with him: https://www.apr.org/post/essayist-breaks-free-conventional-relationships-because-i-love-you

Here's Aaron's chainsaw essay I mentioned a couple of times: https://jellyfishreview.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/no-longer-there-by-aaron-burch/

And then some favorite ongoing columns on Hobart:
https://www.hobartpulp.com/categories/games-of-my-youth
https://www.hobartpulp.com/categories/great-moments-in-cinematic-drinking
https://www.hobartpulp.com/categories/no-bull-bourbon-reviews
https://www.hobartpulp.com/categories/my-first

There were also a lot of questions about what quote from Barry Lopez we kept referring to, so here it is: “It is, I think, the rarest of leisure to refine one's time of deep thought or light regard into the shape of the personal essay -- a story comprised of found fact, of analyzed emotion, of fictive memory.”