By Yashowanto Ghosh, Aquinas Reporter
Jill Talbot, writer of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, came to Aquinas College for the second event of the current season of the Contemporary Writers Series for a lecture and a reading on Thursday, Nov. 14.
Talbot at her craft talk – Photo by Yashowanto Ghosh
Talbot’s afternoon lecture was a talk about craft to a standing-room-only audience in the Loutit Room in the Wege Center. Talbot, who is also a professor of creative nonfiction at University of North Texas, said she was modeling the craft talk after the first day of a class for students who did not yet know what nonfiction was. The talk consisted of several examples of flash essays, which Talbot defined as essays under 250 words. For each essay, Talbot first read it aloud, then asked the audience what caught their ear; then she showed the essay projected on the screen, and moved the discussion forward to things that caught the eye—the visual layout of the text, the typography, and the punctuation; the overall form and structure of the essay; any unexpected word choices. The talk actually felt like class, even ending with a writing prompt where the speaker challenged the members of the audience to write about some everyday object they had lost. At the end of the talk, returning to the initial question of what was nonfiction, Talbot said it was a broad area, but her focus within it was on the personal essay.
Talbot reading – Photo by Yashowanto Ghosh
All the examples in the craft talk were by other writers. Talbot shared her own work at the free public reading in the evening, which took place in the Kretschmer Recital Hall in the Art & Music Center. Talbot opened the reading with the first essay she ever wrote—an essay called “This Is No Lie” she wrote at as late an age as 31, as a graduate student. As the evening progressed generosity with personal details became a major theme of the event. After reading a piece, Talbot would fill the audience in on the context—what else was happening in her life when the events of the essay happened, and what was happening when she later wrote the essay— with each layer adding another dimension to the piece. Among the pieces she read were “Autobiographies” from her 2015 book The Way We Weren’t and “The Return” from last year’s The Last Year.
Talbot at the Q&A – Photo by Yashowanto Ghosh
At the end of the reading, Talbot offered even more when she fielded questions. The audience learned, for example, that she finds “joy in revision,” but that she made no revisions to her first draft of “This Is No Lie” which would get published in her first book. After the Q&A, Talbot still took the time to sign books at a small reception in the AMC basement lobby outside the KRH.
Talbot signing books – Photo by Yashowanto Ghosh
The Contemporary Writers Series, now in its 28th season, was made possible by the generosity of poet Linda Nemec Foster ’72 and doctor Tony Foster ’73. Its theme for this season is writing and mental health. The season’s third and final event will be a visit by Amanda Stern on March 27, 2025.
The Saint 