15 Excellent Flash CNF (Nonfiction) Literary Magazines & Journals
with an essay from Arriel Vinson on the complexity of writing about grief and loss
In this week’s guest essay, writer Arriel Vinson discusses the complexity of writing personal essays about grief and loss and how writing about tough experiences isn't just about telling the story; it's also about dealing with your feelings and piecing together what you remember.
A few months after my divorce, I stopped writing things down. I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want to have a running record of all the ways my ex-husband or future boyfriends or companies or bosses or friends hurt me. I didn’t want to remember the pain of it, so I decided to quit taking notes, to rely on my memory only.
Our memories are soft. Fickle. But that’s what we usually trust the most. Because our memory, for the most part, gives us information when we need it. I always remember the simple things–a birthday, a favorite color, whether or not a friend hates cheese or loves ketchup. But the more detailed things–like what happened during our final conversation–well, I think I remember correctly.
But what is correct? How do we keep record? How can I trust my memory when I’m grieving a loss of any kind–and what gets lost in that grief?
About a year or so after my divorce, I tried to start writing a memoir-in-essays, which stemmed from an essay I wrote for Catapult magazine in 2020. That essay was easy to write–the divorce had just happened and I had been journaling almost daily for four months before I asked for the divorce. I could tell the story of what led me there better than I could tell the story of the aftermath.
The aftermath was foggy, both of my own doing by not keeping daily notes like I had been, and the emotions that made it impossible to parse through what might have been said, or what might not have been.
A year after, or even months after, proved to be too long. I could barely remember some of the moments that scarred me. I had tucked them so far back in my mind that it took browsing old texts to remember. I texted one of my close friends–who had mostly written nonfiction up until we graduated from our MFA program– a few weeks after I tried to start writing the memoir.
How do you remember things from the past, to write about them? I’m having trouble remembering so much.
She gave me a prompt or exercise: that of which I can’t remember now.
What I do remember is the prompts triggered something in me. I was able to relive bits and pieces of certain arguments or remember the moments that plunged us into ruin. Two pages turned into twenty, and now, I can write random lines in my Notes app that I hope to come back to–to finish. To remember more.
Her prompts made me realize I couldn’t approach personal essays as a vehicle for storytelling just yet. I had to first view the personal essay as a vehicle for unlocking what I thought I’d put behind me. I had to give power to my memory. I had to tease it, play with it, feed it something else in hopes that the output was greater.
The personal essay–especially those about grief, loss, and/or heartbreak–is challenging when you have to question your memory. It makes you ask yourself: Is this a true story? Can I tell it? Am I being as honest as I can be on the page?
There are moments my ex-husband and I experienced that I will never remember again. There are experiences I’ve had with past friends and jobs that I will always misremember. Sometimes, memories get lost in the wreckage and we have to make do with what we have left.
When I began editing personal essays for Catapult magazine as a contributing editor, I often selected pitches that surrounded heartbreak of some kind–whether they explored loss of a family member, loss of self, loss of a lover, or loss of an idea.
Editing essays about loss taught me how much understanding of self we gain in the meantime.
Editing those essays helped me learn so much about personal essays in general: That’s there’s almost always another story behind the grief, and that if we can write about it–though grief isn’t linear–we can get one step closer to healing.
But sometimes, writers were so close to the heartbreak that they couldn’t see it clearly enough to tell a story. They hadn’t taken enough space. They hadn’t revisited the pain and they couldn’t–because they were still living in it. If I asked questions in the margins, sometimes they were unwilling–or unable–to answer, whether because of their hurt or because of their misremembering. I would suggest scenes that would help readers understand the author’s relationship to what was lost. Sometimes, they weren’t willing to show us more.
Many times, I’d work on an essay with a writer, and we’d have to stop midway through edits–they’d tell me they weren’t as ready as they assumed they’d be.
The first step to writing any personal essay, especially one about loss and/or heartbreak, is being kind to yourself and being observant of your emotions. You might approach the page thinking, “All I need to do is tell my story.” But you have to push further than that. Writing a personal essay about heartbreak and loss can be cathartic, but first you have to spend time with the grief. You have to let it fester, feel it fully, pull and push at the memories, before you can even begin to tell the story.
We hope you will join Arriel on Saturday, February 3rd, for her Write or Die workshop, Spending Time with Heartbreak, where she will teach you differences in how we approach grief and heartbreak and how to bridge the gap between the two. This 3-hour workshop also provides generative exercises and questions to consider while writing about heartbreak and structuring your essay.
15 Excellent Flash CNF (Nonfiction) Literary Magazines & Journals
Flash CNF is super hard to place. I know, I love to write it. So I’ve added my own commentary for each of the magazines below and segmented them by vibe and level of difficulty since, hey, not all of us are targeting those top-top spots. Again, I’ve offered more info with this list. It is our second with this new style. All feedback is very welcome.
If you write longer nonfiction and aren’t sure where to publish it, we have a list from a while ago with lit mags who publish personal essays
And if you’re into flash, but just not CNF, we interviewed Vestal Review and made a list for those outlets here.
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