I’m thrilled to have received my contributor copy of the new Alaska Quarterly Review, which contains my lyric essay “Have You Ever Given Your Sister a Snowman?” along with a heap of amazing stories, essays, and poems. Thank you to my friends Dustin and J for graciously allowing me to interview them for this essay. Thank you to Ron Spatz and everyone at AQR for publishing it. You can buy issue in print/ebook/pdf/kindle on the AQR website, and I hope that you will!
Wow wow!!! Alaska Quarterly Review accepted my lyric essay “Have You Ever Given Your Sister a Snowman?”! Yippee! Thank you to my friends Dustin and J for allowing me to interview you for this essay. Thank you to Ragdale Foundation for providing me with a residency and fellowship where I could write the early drafts of this essay. Thank you to Ronald Spatz for accepting it!
I’m teaching an online 8-session (Weds 6-8:00 pm ET) creative nonfiction class on the lyric essay starting January 26 for the Downtown Writers Center. Registration is inexpensive and open to the public. You can register with a credit card by calling (315) 474-6851 x380.
To learn more about The Downtown Writer’s Center and download the winter class schedule, with all of their awesome class offerings, visit the Center’s website: https://ymcacny.org/creative-writing-workshops.
My lyric essay “Licked By Our World We Get Licked By Our World” just got published in the new online issue of Bellingham Review! I’m so excited to share this with you all. This is the final essay in my Four Classical Elements series. It’s the water essay, and includes 4000 words on the times I almost drowned, life in the deepest oceans, collecting water from famous places, fish I have known, a diary entry from when I was 15, Altered States, Jaws, Howie Mandel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind…just to name a few. A thousand thanks to all the great folks at Bellingham Review, including B. Woods, Suzanne Paola, and Caity Scott!
Read it HERE!
Day 2 of this summer’s virtual Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and I just finished teaching my class on The Hermit Crab Essay. What an amazing session, such wonderful comments and questions, and the in-class writing that people shared was…wow…so generous, so moving, so beautiful.
This summer’s virtual Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing is underway this week! Today I’m delighted to be teaching my Introduction to the Lyric Essay class! Wonderful opening ceremony last night, with readings by Leonard A Slade Jr. and Alexander Weinstein. Skål!
I had a wonderful time Zoom visiting Jared Green’s ENG 344 class at Stonehill College to talk about my writing and all things Lyric Essay. What a great group of students!
I’m thrilled to share that my lyric essay “What You’re Thinking Now Is a Chunk of Marble” has just been published in Southeast Review‘s new online issue. This essay is from my series inspired by the four fundamental forces. This is the gravity essay, so naturally it touches on…stuff that’s fallen on my head, visiting the local apple festival, Kansas meteorites, buying a house, hanging out on rooftops, Cal Tjader, Yves Klein, middle school science fair, and so on and so on. I wanna say a huge thanks to Zach Linge, Dyan Neary, and everyone at SER!
Read it HERE!
This is just a reminder that I’m teaching a free online creative writing class tomorrow, Wednesday July 1, from 10-12 Eastern Time. It’s a creative nonfiction class on Hermit Crab essays, a kind of lyric essay. They’re fun! No need to register or anything, just use the Zoom link below and join us! It’s part of this week’s virtual 11th year of Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and it’s hosted by the Oak Bluff’s Public Library on Martha’s Vineyard. I can’t take you all out for a cup of chowder afterwards, but we should have a lovely digital time together! 🙂
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Weds July 1: 10am-12: Christopher Citro: Zoom Lyric Essay Writing Workshop:
The Hermit Crab Essay
In this class we’ll explore the hermit crab essay, a hybrid form of the lyric essay which uses the shell of an existing form of writing, such as a recipe or questionnaire, in which to write our own personal essay. We’ll gain an acquaintance with this popular new form of the personal essay, then use prompts to inspire us in our own writing journey. Previous writing experience welcomed but not required. Free and open to all writers.
https://oakbluffs.zoom.us/j/98698055535?pwd=K2NSaU1NYlBqWUtqajg4VnZhNktKdz09
Oh my goodness! My lyric essay “What You’re Thinking Now Is a Chunk of Marble” has just been accepted at Southeast Review! It’s the second in my series of lyric essays inspired by the 4 fundamental forces of physics–this one being the gravity essay. Now I need to get on the stick and finish the remaining 2 on the strong and weak nuclear reactions… Thank you Dyan Neary and the rest of the CNF staff!