Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life

This erudite, incisive collection of 19 essays from creative writing professor Boully (Not Merely Because of the Unknown That Was Stalking Toward Them) blends the personal with the instructive. While discussing the writing process, Boully opens the door to more intimate topics, such as growing up with a multiracial background, falling in love, and coping with post-breakup heartbreak. Interested in the limits of genre, she writes that she is “sometimes called a poet, sometimes an essayist, sometimes a lyric essayist, sometimes a prose poet,” suggesting that such classifications are inadequate to describe a writer or her process. Throughout, she exposes the mind of a writer at work, capturing moments both of inspiration and of gnawing doubt. In “On Writing and Witchcraft,” Boully compares her teenage fascination with witchcraft to her present craft, which can demand psyching herself up into a mindset that makes her feel creative: “staging a certain sacredness before the sacredness can start.” In “On Beginnings and Endings” she writes about her love for beginnings and her fear of endings, both in literature and in life, stating, “the importance of the beginning is to make possible the love affair; the importance of the ending is to make impossible the love affair.” Fellow practitioners of literary nonfiction will find Boully’s writing relatable and charming. (Apr.)