As writers of narrative nonfiction we have at our disposal the entire world of our personal experiences, and in this modern era of this modern world, we have at our fingertips all the known information on any subject that captures our attention. In this way, narrative nonfiction is really a process of editing. Of listening for the piccolo’s notes among an orchestra of several dozen instruments sounding at once. Or of creating a manufactured scarcity from an abundance, and vice versa. It is a process of curating our vast lives and our vaster access to knowledge to convey truths in a meaningful and memorable way. This talk examines the magic that happens in the interstices of skillfully blended memory and research.
Angela Palm is the author of Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here, recipient of the 2014 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in Creative Nonfiction, Tin House, Longreads, Ecotone, Passages North, At Length Magazine, Epiphany, Brevity, Diagram, Essay Daily, Paper Darts, Green Mountains Review, apt, SmokeLong Quarterly, Hippocampus Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, Little Fiction, Big Truths, Sundog Lit, and elsewhere. Her work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and nonfiction, a Derringer Award, Best of the Net, and the Best Short Fictions anthology.