Emily Brisse

(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...