Several months ago I wrote my first lyric essay and succesfully placed it at Eastern Iowa Review literary magazine. I wanted to write about the experience of trying out a new writing form and stepping outside of my comfort zone of traditional personal essays. Below is an excerpt from the beginning of my craft essay:
“If I am being honest, I wasn’t even sure I knew what a lyric essay was. To me, it looked like an essay open to emotional tangents with a loose interpretation of sentence structure. The lyric essays I stumbled upon in online literary journals seemed to borrow from poetry, following rhythm and aiming for a feeling rather than a clear narrative…”