Structure is Everything
On why structure is never mere decoration — and how when I found the shape of my new book, it almost wrote itself.
Hello, all,
Happy Summer! I’m back from a series of gigs and travel that took me away from posting. Looking forward to being here more consistently! June brought me to Provence for a week at the Mediterranean Artist Project with other editors, with a focus on building international connections. Talking to book and magazine editors based in San Francisco, Athens, Cairo, and Berlin made me realize how American-centric our culture is. Not all of it, I know: I’m sure many of you are not. For example, the folks at Transit Books, who were at the conference, do a great job of bringing international writers to the United States. I love what they do.
I do try to read a lot of literature in translation—I gravitate toward writers like Annie Ernaux, Guadalupe Nettel, and Samanta Schweblin—and yet there is still so much that flies past me. For example, I hadn’t tracked this Berlin-based magazine, Delfi, that seems very up my alley (the editors were at the conference and we had a fun swimming in a chilly calanque on a very warm day). Send shoutouts if you’ve read anything you think I might like. I’m looking for something to read on my trip to teach at NYU in Paris this week.
Some bits of news: My former student and Yale Review associate editor Lacey Jones has a great new essay up at The Audacity as part of the Emerging Writers Series. I had a new poem out in The New Yorker two weeks ago. It’s called “Sectioned,” and it’s about the birth of my first child. And I was a guest editor over at Passerby, where I explained how Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way (yes!) helped me kickstart a project this year.
Last but hardly least: in late May, I turned in my new book, Partum, which Riverhead has accepted! It’s about the death of my father and birth of my first sons; it’s a kind of monologue from a woman in extremis, set within a particular compressed time frame. So that will be coming your way once I get notes and do another pass. I suspect it will be published in early 2028.
Today I want to talk about structure and offer some prompts and key thoughts to understanding the work that structure does.