October 21, 2023
Margot, Brooklyn
Featuring:
Jonathan Aprea
Brice Peterson
Natalie Shapero
Robert Whitehead
In 2013, I took a creative nonfiction course with Minnie Bruce Pratt. Her refusal to turn away from herself, from discomfort—and in turn, the world and all its broken inhabitations—was one of her most incredible features. She had the most powerful stare, and felt sense of kindness, and hereness, like the feeling of being in a new home where all the doors swing silent.
The leading prompt for the class was to identify and write toward our “burning question.” She let us define that question in silence. It was loud coming from [class]rooms with so much direction and feedback. Her silence offered space for the painful act of crawling out of my protections—to learn how to listen, learn who I was, become a writer who could possess her words. When she passed in July 2023, I felt certain that silence was as, if not more important, than the writing itself. This brought me to write again. What’s in the silence is the burning question, and silence as the theme was an opportunity to learn what other artists make of their own.