Emily Brisse

As many of you know, the vast majority of my regular online writing life has moved to Instagram ( @emilybrisse ). But, since a fair few of you don't do the social media thing (good on you!), I thought it was time here for a brief update. In addition to parenting and teaching and hiking and reading and road-tripping and surviving over the course of the pandemic (hope you and your family fared as well as possible), I've kept writing. It's been a slow but sure journey, and I'm happy to say I've reached a significant milestone in my big project: writing a novel. More on that soon!  Until then, check this link for a list of many of my publications that can be found online from places like Creative Nonfiction , Motherwell, and Grub Street Review . My latest is a hybrid reported piece--a departure from what I typically write--up at Parents about the economy, mom guilt, and the benefits of daycare . If that sounds interesting, I'd love to hear what you think.  And if...

Right now, my two children are entertaining themselves in the playroom. I've spent the past twenty minutes lying in bed, listening to them in the midst of the relationship they share outside of me or my husband. Someday I will write about this, about the way it makes me feel suspended between lake and sky on a perfectly calm day. But that is not the point of this post. I came here to craft a bit of a writing update: In the spring, I had a string of print publications, including essays in Grub Street, Lumina, Saw Palm, and December Magazine (I was a finalist in a contest for this one), plus a short story in New South . None of these are available online, unfortunately, but they were fun to receive, hold in my hands, and share with the people I can hold hands with. In the summer, I published an essay detailing my first experience with trapeze, called "Hup," in Tahoma Literary Review . You can hear me read it here (all my years of reading aloud to students hel...

(Below, an oldie but a goodie, published first by Literary Mama in 2015. ) You were never much of a hunter. Pheasants, yes. Squirrels and chipmunks, I suppose, when you were younger. But you never came home from a weekend away with a buck in the bed of your truck, because you never had much interest in deer season and you owned a sedan. I imagine some people from other places can hardly conceive of a Midwestern man without a shotgun over his mantle, a closet full of blaze-orange jackets, a copy of  Field and Stream  next to the john. And yet when I think of you, I do see an outdoorsman. I see you paying attention to landscapes, to the shapes of clouds. I see you teaching me to love the world. The lessons looked like this: leaf piles in autumn, the way you would dive into them wildly. And this: two ends of a strong rope -- one tied to the front of my winter sled and the other around your waist -- with which you’d tug me behind you as you cross-country skied. And this:...

One year ago I learned the great state of Minnesota was trusting me with an Artist Initiative Grant in support of my writing. This vote of confidence from strangers gave me a specific kind of momentum, and in these past twelve months I’ve published essays in great places (' This Is My Oldest Story " in Creative Nonfiction's True Story #15 ; " To Be Held " in Sweet ; " Look At It Like This " in Up North Lit ; & " Clean Lines " in Ninth Letter ), was a finalist in a nonfiction contest ( Curt Johnson Prose Award ), received two nominations each for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize (thanks, Sweet, UPL , and Creative Nonfiction !), taught an adult writing class through Minnetonka Community Ed (which I'll be offering again through the Plymouth Library system in late winter), and folks, I’ve gone and written a manuscript. I’ve barely touched its pages since school began in August, but something shifted over this last month, and the ...

I'm happy to share that my essay "This Is My Oldest Story" has been published by  Creative Nonfiction's True Story . The title doesn't say it all, but it says a lot. With these words, I finally found a way to write about something I've been trying to process since I was eight: the abduction and decades-long disappearance of Jacob Wetterling , a neighbor boy from my hometown. Even though--as I discuss in the essay--I still have reservations regarding writing about Jacob publicly, I had another conversation with another stranger just yesterday that echoed much of what I explore in this piece: how for Minnesotans, there was "a time before Jacob Wetterling's kidnapping and a time after it," how the entire region was affected by this boy's loss. Sitting with these memories now still reduces me to fear and anger and heart ache. Which is why I wrote about them. Which is why I think we all do better when we leave the solitary shadows. By tellin...

Aside from Thanksgiving, which I love, November can be a gray month in Minnesota. But this year, it brought me some bright news: I was awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in support of my in-progress essay collection . It's a big honor and a big responsibility, and to say I feel overwhelmed by the expectations I have set for myself is an understatement. But there is no time like now. Perhaps this--in addition to the new baby and preschooler and fixer-upper house and demanding job--explains why I have been so absent from this space? Fingers crossed that absence here means presence in some bound hard-cover pages one fine day.

Popping in quickly here to point to you a story of mine that was recently published by Santa Fe Literary Review . It's called "Confluence," and it's a bit of a sad one. But sometimes life is like that. Here's a snippet: "It was astonishing to her that the water just kept coming, that it passed by her for one instant and then was on to someplace else. She assumed the creek led into the Sauk, the river that ran through Albrun—the town five miles west of them—but then where did it go? What happened next? All this water mixing, these long trails that moved across counties and states and into oceans without anyone accounting for their individual particles—it scared her that there was no way of linking even one molecule to the snow on a hillside in a small country yard." I wrote this one years ago now, so I'm grateful SFLR gave it a home. Thanks for reading, all!

All, It's...the middle of June! How that happened, I can't explain. Well, I can, but the explanation will be a very simple one: baby. Baby, baby, baby. How sweet she is, and how sweet it is to be her mother. All the feels. All the gazing. All the lazy afternoons in bed. And now that her brother has joined us for the summer, all the ways in which we are settling into the new dimensions of our days (and nights). Who knows when I will read a full book again!? No matter. I am reading other things: cries, coos, wide eyes, the width of her milky thighs, the way she responds to the wind. It is not for everyone, this mothering, but I am glad it is for me. Books:   Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into The Mystery and Art of Living  by Krista Tippett -- I really truly think this was the only book I read this spring. And if I was going to read one book only, I'm so glad this was it. It was one of my favorite books that I've read in years. It's not one to read quickly. You c...

In the middle of April--all the leaves reaching up and out above the marsh, the ground covered with green shoots and blades, the air full of fresh breath, the sky blue with rain--our daughter was born. We named her Charlotte. And to us, she is sweeter than anything else that is clean and fragrant and hopeful this spring. With my first child, words came naturally, and fast. I felt a need to say all the things, to record somehow the way I was feeling, the way it all seemed, how particular were the moments I spent getting to know him, getting to know myself as a mother, getting to know the newly defined world. I reread those musings now, and they still feel exactly right. I can remember who I was when I wrote them. I can remember how that version of the world felt, as viscerally as I can touch and sense my own skin. But with this baby--there is less urgency. I'm not sure exactly why this is, as she will be my last child. I know she will never be eight pounds again, her days of bei...

Hey all, I don't know about you, but this has been a strange and sometimes scary but often wonderful end-of-winter. To say that it is already March feels bizarre, but at the same time, here in Minnesota we've experienced one of the warmest winters on record, so...despite my reservations about what this means for our planet, I'm already in spring mode. And since I'm due to meet my second baby in early April, there is no rewinding for me: Spring is arrival. Spring is wakefulness. Spring is revelation. I say: Welcome, welcome. I'd love to hear what you've all been up to. I'm not sure how much reading I'll get to in the coming months (buh-bye, hands-free bedtime routine!), but I always keep a will-read-later list running. Suggestions, please! And I hope the sun warms you in these coming months all the way down to the bone. Books:   Madness , Rack, and Honey  by Mary Ruefle -- Ruefle was a professor of mine in grad school, and the title of this, ...

   

There's a lot to love about the world.

A few weeks ago, my husband, son, and I journeyed out to the Portland, Oregon, area to visit family. As luck would have it, we arrived just two days after one of Portland's biggest snowstorms in years and years. (Apparently, when people out there encounter a snow event, they abandon their cars on the highways and somehow hitch a hide home, ostensibly on the nine snowplows Portland has for the entire city. Suffice it to say, this baffled us Minnesotans. :) Our luck involved landing at the airport after  it was up and running again, and also being able to enjoy an already gorgeous part of the country under a blanket of fresh and frosty white. I took these photos on a solo walk along the Lewis River one early morning. It was a beautiful way to greet the day, and it reminded me of a walk I took at the very end of my pregnancy with my son . This time, I whispered to a new baby, and despite the single-digit temperatures, I was warm. Happy February, friends. Spring is near, an...

Hello world, What an autumn, huh? In Minnesota, the weather has been fantastically long and glorious. We didn't have our first frost until just before Thanksgiving. That meant a lot of time outside, and some grateful leniency with how long we had to rake up all those millions of yellow leaves. And also, there was the election in there, which threw everyone I knew for a loop, no matter which side of the political line they landed on. It's still something many of us are sifting through, and the mess has been hard to see around at times. But it all keeps moving forward, doesn't it? I'm holding as many people's hands as I can. As we crest into the holiday season, however, I've decided to focus on how very much I have to be thankful for. Did you know that there's a lot of research on how practicing intentional gratitude on a daily basis actually has positive effects on one's health ? It's no shock to me, but I like knowing there is science behind it....

Littlest One, It is snowing outside. Last week the grass was green, my begonias still vaunting their soft pink petals. And tonight, your brother asleep, the night a quiet dark, I watch the way the white changes everything over into something new. You do not know yet, the way things fall at different speeds. You do not know yet, the way a cup of hot tea can calm. You do not know yet, the feel of soil between your fingers. You do not know yet, the sound of singing. You do not know yet, the possibilities of a daydream. You do not know yet, the scent of wood smoke. You do not know yet, the pleasures of the body. You do not know yet, how humans can disappoint. You do not know yet, this snow softly falling, this apple on my tongue, how beautiful and fragile it all can seem. I have tried to guide your brother. “Look,” I tell him. “Look up, look low, look there, look under, smell that, touch this, listen to that crow that chickadee that owl. Breathe...

Because sometimes you need to think not cold but warmth. Because sometimes you need to think not dark but light. Because sometimes you need to think not fall back but spring forward . Here's an old essay, friends, that I first tapped out right here in this space that has, in the meantime, become a newish thing, a reminder that we can find a balance between two unsteady places. Visit the most recent online issue of The Fourth River , and once you open the PDF, read the other wonderful stories, essays, and poems, and then find my essay "Spring Forward," on page 96, at the very back. Thanks for reading. And believing in the transformative power of art. It is what will save us. It is what always has.

Hi Friends, I'll be saying this with a sigh, but O Summer!  I am already deep into classes with my students, and where it does feel good to be back with young minds talking about things that matter, summer is a particular treasure. We were everyday outside, at parks, at beaches, in lakes and rivers and streams, up to our armpits in our garden flowers. We also spent a lot of time with family and friends, at cabins, birthday parties, splashpads, and swimming lessons. My boy learned to fish. He wanted to fish every day. He would spot the earthworm wiggling into the hole behind the branch and grab it, lift it up, study its perfectly spaced indentations. I watched his body lengthen, and I listened to him tell me stories, and it is a little astonishing to me, that I have been in this world for three and a half years with him, and he is still articulating things with the lift of his eyelashes that I hadn't known existed. I am a proud mama, a happy mama, a mama thankful for a seaso...