Selected Creative Nonfiction

We are like pack ice. From a distance, we seem solid. Come closer and you will see that everyone is made of stories, fragments moving against each other, pushed by hidden currents, shaped by the collisions.

This selection of creative nonfiction writing spans memoir, place writing and personal essay writing. 

monsters

 “I was born into a house that wrote.  Stories embossed on paper, each keystroke unleashing a hammer blow, leaving an indelible mark.  Words had permanence.  Sharing was a tactile act, accompanied by smudges of carbon paper, transmitted from hand to hand.  We bore the marks on us too.  It was unavoidable.”

tracks in the snow

“It snowed in the night.  While we were sleeping, it snuck up on us as the world held its breath.  We woke to a new monochrome morning, the air electric with the possibility of a day unspoilt.”

seamus heaney and why we write

“It's what I do, I never really remember a time when I didn't and the notion of stopping is inconceivable.”

the landscape of literature

“Finding wild places isn’t always easy.  They disappear between the demands of a working life and it is all too easy to forget to take the time to rediscover them – hidden, sometimes, in the overgrown corner of a village garden or flying with a pair of kites over an exposed ridge on a crisp autumn morning with a frost on the air.”