The Best of Brevity

Today I interviewDinty W. MooreandZoë Bossiere, the editors of the new anthologyThe Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction(Rose Metal Press, 2020). The anthology brings together the best of Brevity Magazine, which publishes works of literary nonfiction that are less than 750 words. So how do you write about, say, the experience of becoming a mother or losing a father or coming of age or the nature of our age, all in less than 750 words? And how do you do it powerfully, beautifully, and artfully? It seems impossible. And yet for over twenty years, this is exactly what Brevity has given us: thousands of literary gems that glow and pulse with our humanity. Today I get a chance to ask Dinty and Zoë about how these 750-words-or-less wonders work and how the magazine has fostered a new literary genre into American letters.

Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. He is the author of five books, most recently Remember Me. He can be reached ateric@ericlemay.org.