Narrative Essays, Literary Journalism, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir
Richard S. Gilbert, photographed by Dinty W. Moore
“It takes stamina and self mastery and faith. It demands those things of you, then gives them back with a little extra, a surprise to keep you coming.”—Tobias Wolff, In Pharaoh’s Army
Fiction works its way in, too, in reviews and consideration of technique. But this blog focuses on reading, writing, and teaching narrative nonfiction. Narrative here means storytelling by whatever means of showing and telling. Certain preoccupations have emerged: style, structure, and use of self in nonfiction prose. I’m a rather middlebrow reader, though—I like story—and modernist pyrotechnics alone can weary me. I fall between the two literary cultures in America, academic and New York, but lean a little more toward the latter; of course the camps are permeable and their borders aren’t well policed: at night, desperate riders on dark horses going in both directions thunder past the picket fires.
I’m a memoirist, essayist, and journalist whose writing has appeared in Orion, Fourth Genre, Chautauqua, Farming: People, Land, Community and other publications. Two of my memoir essays can be read on line, “Kathy” at Brevity and “My Father’s Tractor” at SNReview. Memoir (and) offers the opening of “Remembering Paul,” about my helper on our sheep farm in Appalachian Ohio, the complete text of which is available on Scribd. Also on Scribd is my Pushcart-nominated Chautauqua essay “A Dry Year,” about rebuilding a pond during a summer of Biblical plagues—heat, drought, locusts, storm—with a legendary excavator who carried a tragic secret.
I operated a sheep farm for ten years, and for those really interested in animal husbandry, Sheep Canada published my essay on the history of selective livestock breeding, “From Bakewell to BLUP”; the Google reader version of part one is here.
I worked in newspapers and university press book publishing, each for more than a decade, was a Kiplinger fellow in journalism at Ohio State, and earned an MFA in creative nonfiction at Goucher College. I have taught writing at Ohio State, Indiana University, and Ohio University and now teach English and journalism at Otterbein University, on the banks of Alum Creek in Westerville, Ohio. I’m writing a memoir about farming and Appalachia.
My email address is richard.stuart.gilbert@gmail.com
The blog’s header collage is from “Gathered and Assembled” by my friend Jeff Kallet, an artist in Athens, Ohio. You can see some of Jeff’s art on Flickr.
Original writing on this site is Copyrighted by Richard Gilbert. It may be used freely, for noncommercial purposes, with credit.
Exciting that you’ve found an online writing space! I like the header and think that this is a good place to share ideas on the subjects you love… -t
Thanks for including immersion in a Big Idea in the category of narrative.
Interesting site – thank you! I have linked to you at my own site, up in Canada.
Thanks so much for this rich array of information; I have been looking for just such a resource. Looks like my first step is to immerse in your blog!
Mary
Flat Rock Creek Notebook
http://flatrockcreeknotebook.com
Funny thing: I saw your blog thorugh Dinty Moore’s facebook page. We don’t know one another yet, but it occurs to me, we’re likely related. I’m the daughter and granddaugher of Robert Gilbert(s), and the elder Robert Gilbert, who hails from Wisconsin originally, had relatives named Richard, including, I think, a brother. And, you look enough like both of them that I thought I’d write. Funny thing: I too have ties to Ohio State, as I finished an MFA there two years ago. I now teach comp, lit, writing at Miami University in Middletown. How fun, if we’re related!
And , love the blogging. Ah, narrative.
Thanks,
Laurel
Laurel,
We are 100 percent related as humans. And yes, probably as Gilberts too! That side of my family founded Taunton, MA, and were thick in Springfield and Boston. My grandfather went to Detroit and procreated there—my father, for one.
OSU’s MFA program is really good from what I hear. Hope our paths cross in Columbus sometime at a reading or some such . . . Richard
I’m really pleased to have found this blog. I was looking for information about writing a memoir, which I am getting deeper into by the day. I really appreciate your insights and the collected thoughts of others that you’ve amassed here. I am sure it will prove to be very helpful.
Thank you, Rae, and welcome. I’ll be visiting your own blog, on gender and culture in China, too, because my wife and I are traveling there this coming winter.
Richard,
Boo hoo. After reading your entire website on your Katahdin flock, I was disappointed when I clicked your contact link and discovered you no longer live in the Athens area (where we just moved) and raise sheep.
My husband and I have done a lot of research on raising sheep over the last four years. We are ready to get started and were considering Katahdins. The information on your website agreed with our approaches and philosophy. However, one question looms: Why did you sell your flock? Do you currently raise any sheep?
I appreciate any advice you might pass our way before we make the leap. Thanks.
Beth,
We moved up to the big city for new jobs, but I miss my flock. I will email you some advice on how to get started with good Katahdins.
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You’ve operated a sheep farm and are a memoirist (among other things). I love the apparent incongruity of the two! Congratulations on your success in both the worlds. I love your style.
Priya
Awesome Richard. I am so very glad to have found your BLOG and contact information. I trust you and Kathy are well. All is good here abeit wet. Lambs are hitting the ground. We started lambing on Saturday. Ralph
Excellent analysis. Looking forward to more.
~Christin Geall
Happy to have found your blog!
Hi there would you mind sharing which blog platform you’re working with? I’m going to start my own blog in the near future but I’m having a difficult time choosing between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your design and style seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for something completely unique. P.S Sorry for getting off-topic but I had to ask!
WordPress, of course–the best! For me at least, easy to use, lots of features. I am not familiar, however, with those others you list.
First of all I would like to say awesome blog! I had a quick question in which I’d like to ask if you do not mind. I was interested to know how you center yourself and clear your mind before writing. I have had trouble clearing my thoughts in getting my thoughts out there. I truly do take pleasure in writing however it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes are usually lost simply just trying to figure out how to begin. Any suggestions or hints? Thank you!
If you are losing only ten to fifteen minutes clearing your head, thank your lucky stars. Writing is seldom efficient. And you build your writing muscle by writing, increase your endurance. A nice writing session for me, when I am well into a project at least, is three hours. The first hour is getting back into what I was doing—reading, thinking, struggling. The second hour I begin to get into it and kick out some new work. The third hour, something magic sometimes happens, at least if it’s going to. The key is to know there will be bad days as well as average, good, and great, and don’t give up.
Wow, amazing blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The overall look of your site is wonderful, as well as the content!
Wow, Goz. My filter identified this as spam, which I’m sure it is. But I liked your compliments so much I’m approving it. I do wonder whether people follow your link and buy what you are selling after you post such comments. But then, your appeal to my vanity and unwitting appeal to my perversity worked. Not the first time I have approved spam, but rare.
So, way to go!
Hi! My name is Maggie Fry and I am just beginning my Goucher adventure. My mentor this semester is Leslie Rubinkowski, and she suggested I contact you (she also said to say “Hi” for her). As my thesis topic, I am exploring the tie that connects people to a piece of land: what draws people to a homesteading life and what they do in order to be able to stay there. I have lived on 20 -30 acres in NW Pennsylvania for over twenty years and I am interviewing people who have also spent many years homesteading.
Leslie said that your thesis was also about your experiences on a farm. I read your prologue on your blog (I had never heard the phrase “groundhogs making coffee”; that’s great) and I see you raise sheep. I only have two sheep at the moment, but plan to get more soon (it is difficult to get a shearer to come if you have fewer than six and my back is not up to shearing any more).
What books did you find particularly helpful while you were writing? Also, have you published your memoir yet? It sounded from the prologue as if you haven’t, but I could be wrong. I guess what I am trying to say is that I would be grateful for any advice you can give me during this exciting and terrifying time.
Hi Maggie,
Nice of Leslie to put us in touch–Hi back to her.
My memoir is now “under review” as they say. So it has been a long time getting there, six years, but that’s the average to write a publishable book.
In my case, I really needed to learn how to write a memoir, which Goucher started, but the process continued. My first versions were insufficiently scenic and needed narrative threads from start to finish. Mine was more like linked essays at first but wanted to be a narrative. I did get the idea of strong acts from Goucher, especially from Leslie, but just had so much learning to do. And as you imply, it came from reading while I wrote and rewrote.
There are some new, big farm memoirs out, like The Blueberry Years, The Orchard, and This Life is in Your Hands. Other memoirs that I Iove include Name All the Animals, Lit, Between Panic and Desire, and In Pharaoh’s Army. If you click on my blog on memoir or reviews or author interviews there’s a lot more.
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I’m so happy to have found your blog. I’m four drafts, three years, and 30,000 words into a memoir — still so much to learn — and loving every awful moment of the writing and revising of it. My blog’s new — annehodgeswhite.com — and I’m still learning. I’ve already picked up several suggestions from your blog. Thank you, thank you.
Great blog. So happy to have found it. I am in my last semester at Goucher working on a collection of essays. I blog at longwinded lady.com.
Holly Sneeringer
Thanks, Holly! I will check out your blog now . . .