Thank you to The New Quarterly for publishing my piece ‘The Last Barrel’, the first creative nonfiction I’ve done! You can read it here.
I love fiction. I love hiding behind a veil of unreality, where anything is possible. It’s free. Me? What I see every day? It’s not free.
I move through the world of fiction instinctively. I feel the words. For nonfiction, I had to be much more deliberate, more thoughtful… and perhaps a little more irreverent. I defaulted to an irreverent tone as a form of self-protection, I think, exposing my inner thoughts and trying to make them sound flippant. But this is definitely as real as I get with writing.
I like to think this piece is angry because I’m angry, and that I’m angry because climate change is real no matter how many people opine on the opposite. Why do they do that? This piece explores the core reason, which I think is rather obvious when you think about it, but for some reason, I needed to say it out loud.
I think I would write more nonfiction, but always be heavily slanted towards fiction. It was a fun experiment and I’m so grateful to The New Quarterly for giving me the opportunity. It’s a legendary literary magazine in my mind, a place where I’ve always wanted to appear. Plus, it’s my hometown journal!
Hope you read it. I don’t know if my writing is important in any way, but this topic certainly is.
Discover more from Trent Lewin
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
14 Responses
AWESOME!
Hi Trent, I used to read your work like 10 years ago and just got an email I don’t know how to log into WordPress anymore haha just wanted to say hi.
I remember you! How are things? Yeah, WordPress is pretty lonely. Mine is more a website than a blog now.
Well done, Trent.
Thank you! Much appreciate it.
Wow. I’ll say this Trent, and I don’t say it lightly. I’ve never said this before to you, please note. (I say that because sometimes what I’m about to say is said to me, and when it’s said to me more than once by the same person (which it has), it loses meaning). I think that’s the best thing you’ve written. Or maybe, since I haven’t read everything you’ve ever writtten, it’s the best thing you’ve wrtitten that I’ve read. Because it’s so very, incredibly Trent Lewin. The voice is the same, it’s there. It’s just not covered up with fiction. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. You could just as well say it’s fiction that is the vehicle for the voice. But this feels different. You’re channeling the same magic, just as you, not somone else. This was really very, very good.
Thank you so much, Walt! A little bit of unvarnished me, for sure, and thus a bit of a risk. Fiction is so much more comfortable. Really glad you liked this piece, your feedback is massive!
This is a great piece. Very sad, very moving. We are all afraid, but we all fear different things. Pieces like this are always difficult for me to read because they amplify the sadness I’ve felt for the last forty years of my life. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you, Charlene. Wish these things didn’t need to be written but that’s where we are in this life.
How did BookFest go?
It was lovely. Cold that day, which I think affected the amount of foot traffic we got, but still fun. We even had someone from the audience get up and rock the mic for a few minutes. Very rad!
Wish I could have been there but was travelling! We still need to meet up!
Congratulations! It’s always good to write outside your comfort zone occasionally. Stretches the muscles we use most often in new ways and makes us more flexible.
Thank you! Comfort zones are made to be exited, in my mind.