Emily Brisse

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.

    Another installment of Name-That-Plant-Growing-in-the-Marsh: Bittersweet nightshade Eastern daisy fleabane (aster family) Some kind of lovely leaf -- who knows what this is??? Daisy Creeping bellflower ? ? Some kind of grass ??? Motherwort Clover ? Common mullein My boy, out in it all Quite a few plants I couldn't identify this month, folks, so I need your help. What did I get right? What did I miss? Goodness, this world is a wild and beautiful place.

    For those of you who have been here since the very beginning of Landing on Cloudy Water, you might remember my early attempts to learn and document the names of what I saw growing around me. First there was the snowdrop , then the Siberian squill , then the forsythia , then the tarda tulip , and finally the wild columbine. Well, a child came into my life a bit after all that, and naming him, I suppose, claimed my attention. I am happy to say, though, that he is now at the age where he wants to know what he's seeing, and that has given me new cause to do the same. So, I bring you yet again, a series in wild identification: Plant Literate! (Although I seem to be always a month behind, and have no time for individual posts, so it will most likely happen in bursts. Ah, well. Better something than nothing, is my current motto.) This is a doubly-sweet endeavor because what I've been learning these past months has been focused on the growing ...

Friends, Today is the last day of school for my students, and although I'll continue through the end of the week with my colleagues in workshops and other wrap-up activities, summer has arrived. It's been another wonderful year, but I can't think of one solitary person who doesn't love these two words put together: summer break. Summer break! Oh, for a few months in which to go where the wind blows me, do what the whims insist! Perhaps I'll show up here a bit more? Or perhaps I'll disappear still deeper into this marsh that is my back yard, what with its wildflowers and ferns and maples and oaks and ash and cottonwood and beech and tamarack stands. I am rippling with contentment. Can you tell? Like the leaves. Like the air, blue and redolent, and so very very close.  Books:   The Progress of Love by Alice Munro -- The entire collection is wonderful, but "Miles City, Montana" struck at my heart with a force. The Small Backs of Children  by...

 So, as I've mentioned here previously, we bought a fixer-upper this past spring. Where the house is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters (the unpredictable and quirky type), it is the land (of course) that has already merged with whatever voice I might use to write about it. One rainy morning, and it is all sanctuary and joy.  Hope you are relishing your summers, friends!

Good morning, It it raining here, lightly, and the view out my window is an ecstatic shaking green. I am three floors up, and yet I do not see the sky, I do not see the ground: just trunks and branches and leaves, close and middling and deep. What a scene to wake to! As ridiculous as these last months have been, these trees are saving me. Have saved me. Are already old friends.  I see now I'm going to have to write about them. Later. Soon. Graduation for the seniors tonight. And then: summer. Spring was a new house. A new roof. New floors and carpets and paint and cabinet liner and drawer pulls and towels. It was so much more space, these large open rooms that echoed even with our whispers. It was windows, light streaming in through the then bare branches. It was one holy morning when the buds popped open, and everywhere was suddenly yellow green and green yellow and holy holy holy. It was worrying about an old house with holes and trusting a new world so very able to fill it...

When I was a June twenty-two, one week fresh from graduation, I took a flight to Lubbock and wore cowboy hats with friends as young and sweet as grass. One night we put on skirts and tall boots and ambled through the halls  of an old restaurant, bourbon and whiskey  in glasses, all very kin to cigars  and mustaches, dark with ranch wood. The stars would be bright, the moon uncommonly full in that wide sky, so we stepped outside, a slight chill wrapping down our boots and around our ankles, expecting Texas. Instead, the screams of a child-- two children? more?--broke the twilight, and I gaped up--up, for they were in the trees,  perched and wailing at the coming dark, pleading in a language I couldn't decipher. “Peacocks,” a man said, amused, thumb in his pocket. I know because I stared at him in astonishment. Pressed pants. No belt buckle. Thin tie. No cowboy hat. Peacocks in trees, their tail feathers draped ...

in Latin:   autumnus n French:   automne in Italian:   autunno in Spanish:   otoño in Portuguese:   outono in Arabic:   خريف in Lakota:   ptaŋyétu in Cebuano:   t ingdagdag in Somali:   d eyr in Greek:   φθινόπωρο in Chechan:   g üire in Thai:   ฤดูใบไม้ร่วง in Persian:   پاييز  in Czech:   podzim in Finnish:   syksy in Japanese:   秋 in Chinese:   秋天 in Danish:   efterår in Dutch:   herfst in low German:   h arvst in Old English:   hærfest in Icelandic:   haust Or, in Me: haystacks gravel-road drives dark earth and morning dried herbs acorns bonfires wild rice yelloworangeredbrown tractors and harvest time pomegranates warm cheese corners of swirling leaves dawn fog pumpkins auburn skies I see you,  you see me thinner trees cheers from fields on Friday nights warm soup hearty bread fr...