Brevity and the Personal Essay

Brevity publishes well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief (750 words or less [sic]) essay form. We have featured work from two Pulitzer prize finalists, numerous NEA fellows, Pushcart winners, Best American authors, and writers from India, Egypt, Ireland, Spain, Malaysia, and Japan. We have also published many previously unpublished authors, and take a special joy in helping to launch a new literary career.
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That’s what the editors at Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Fiction have to say about their online literary journal.

Here’s your assignment: Write a concise personal essay (750 words or fewer) about a significant relationship in your life. It could be a relationship with a person, a group, a place, an object, or something else. In writing your essay consider the literary elements that we have investigated, particularly voice, organization, storytelling, description, and reflection. Use these elements to characterize the relationship and to develop a theme (or themes). (Use the class readings as models.) 

A first draft will be due on Wednesday, October 10. In class on October 10 you will self-assess and peer-assess drafts. A final draft will then be due on Friday, October 12.

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Reminders:
Your assignment for Wednesday night is to write a paragraph reflecting on your six-word memoirs and your "bridges" in relation to Phillip Lopate's ideas about personal essay writing.

Bring the reflective paragraph to class Thursday 10/4 along with your six-word memoirs and bridges. 

Your assignment for Thursday night is to annotate two personal essays, "Stories from My Mother" and "Becoming a Sanvicentena: Five Stages". Bring the readings and annotations to class on Friday 10/5.