From Brevity’s nonfiction blog.

“I’ve lost quite a few people along the way,” Patricia Hampl writes in I Could Tell You Stories. “And not to death. I lose them to writing. The one who accused me of appropriating her life, the one who said he was appalled, the poet miffed by my description of his shoes, the dear elderly priest who said he thought I understood the meaning of a private conversation, this one, that one. Gone. Gone. Their fading faces haven’t faded at all, just receded, turned abruptly away from me, as is their right.”