This month I’m proud to present four very different pieces that emerge from the same genre, four essays that demonstrate how diverse and strong and vibrant this enormous species known as creative nonfiction can be.

Richard Cronborg’s “Drill Rigging, Winter 1974” is a sharp-edged example of what used to be called “slice of life” writing, attesting to a time when writers presumably not only wrote about life, but were handy enough to slice it up into wedge-shaped instruments of realism.  Richard’s piece is the kind of manuscript every editor loves, because with each sentence of the opening paragraph you become more and more excited by the belief that “I’m going to accept this for publication as soon as I get to the last word.”

I found the same was true of Joan Connor’s “Babes,” though it couldn’t be a more different type of tale.  For any guy who’s ever wanted to be perversely manipulative and cocky enough to walk up to a babe and ask her, “What’s it like to be a babe?”, Joan’s essay invents a surprisingly varied number of ways to say, “You’re a jerk.”  Women readers—whether they consider themselves to be babes or not—whether they even consider it an important question—will probably understand and enjoy that response more than any male reader will.  Even so, it’s educational reading for a guy who has eyes in his head, and who stops girl-watching long enough to place those eyes on a page of a woman’s writing more than once in a while.

Joe Bonomo’s “The Alphabet in the Shag Carpet” provides a different kind of educational experience.  I read the essay three times and then took a walk to the donut shop.  Walking back home, stuffing a cruller into my mouth, I thought “This essay sketches a dialectical metaphysic.”  I must rush to assure my readers that I have donuts in my mouth far more often than I experience thoughts of this sort.  The essay—which I must warn you appears to be about as disarmingly simple a piece of writing as you’re ever likely to encounter, unless, every morning, you’re used to pondering the deeper meaning of a triptych of cereal boxes—is in three parts.  You can put these three parts together in your mind any way you like.  Try it.  You’ll educate yourself a different way each time.

After reading three very strong pieces on the respective themes of drill rigging, babe dynamics, and metaphorical memory, the best possible denouement would be to encounter a personal, deeply felt, solidly crafted piece of narrative nonfiction that employs all of the techniques of fiction to deliver its tale, thereby defining with every turn of sentence, paragraph, and scene what creative nonfiction is supposed to be all about.  Fortunately, Allison Pranger provides us with precisely this kind of reading experience in “Southern Cross.”  You’ll think you’re reading the early work of a woman who is on her way to becoming a brilliant novelist.  Maybe you are—I don’t know.  All I know is that you’re reading the early work of a woman who is already a brilliant writer, period.