Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies

13/09/2025

Your weekly reminder to submit to Assay! Our submission portal is open year round!

We are looking for:
🍂Academic scholarship on nonfiction texts, techniques, and authors
🍂Informal discussions of craft elements, book reviews, or nonfiction authors
🍂Formal and informal pedagogy that addresses all levels of students
🍂Brief analytical pedagogy for In The Classroom Blog
🍂Nonfiction Syllabi

View our full submission guidelines and submit your work here: https://www.assayjournal.com/submit.html

Or visit the link in our bio!



Photo by Sydney Moore on Unsplash

12/09/2025

Every new month brings a whole new chance for publication!

River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative and their sister journal Beautiful Things are now open for submissions from September 1st - December 1st. The River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize is also open for submissions from September 1st - October 31st.

Read complete guidelines and submit to River Teeth & Beautiful Things here: https://riverteethjournal.com/submission-guidelines/

Submit to River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize here: https://riverteethjournal.com/book-prize/



Photo by David Dvořáček on Unsplash

11/09/2025

This Throwback Thursday, we’re revisiting Assay issue 8.2 with Barrie Jean Borich’s essay “Radical Surprise: The Subversive Art of the Uncertain.” In this piece, Borich celebrates the role of surprise in creative nonfiction, arguing that the essayist’s ability to wobble between ideas, or to “baffle” more than waffle, invites new awareness and shifts readers’ perspectives. Through reflections on personal shock, natural disasters, and the limits of certainty, she demonstrates how embracing uncertainty becomes a powerful act of writing—one that sustains change and resists disintegration.

“As writers, and as humans, how do we keep thinking about ourselves and our environments in new ways? When I suggest that the art of essaying requires an embrace of surprise I am suggesting that the essay is always, in some way, about change. Seeing our work, and our worlds, from new vantage points is the single most important element of intentional progression, and of writing the essay. Without change the essay disintegrates, like an old building falling away from its foundation. Change itself is no less precarious, but there is a difference between creative change that comes of action and breaking change that comes of neglect.”

Read here: https://www.assayjournal.com/barrie-jean-borich-radical-surprise-the-subversive-art-of-the-uncertain-82.html



Photo by Ashwin Vaswani on Unsplash

11/09/2025

New interview added to our archives!

Joanna Eleftheriou interviews Nicole Graev Lipson on her memoir-in-essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters for Assay issue 11.2. She discusses how she places "every single word…on trial" to illuminate the cracks, contradictions, and cultural expectations of motherhood. Lipson also reflects on the suspense engine in her essays, a central, unanswered question that propels the narrative, and how her poetic attention to diction sharpens the emotional impact of nonfiction.

“One thread I explore in my book is the lasting influence of the wise woman mentors I’ve been fortunate to have in my life, many of whom pursued literary-minded careers. My high school English teacher Mrs. Rinden awakened my love of poetry and made me believe that perhaps I could be a writer one day. My college writing professor Lydia Fakundiny, who taught a course called The Art of the Essay, sparked my love of the form, and I can still feel her presence in everything I write. She was the first person who made me feel that my thinking could be of consequence. And she helped me understand how writing could be an instrument of that thinking, and not simply a record of what one already thinks.”

Read the complete interview here: https://www.assayjournal.com/nicole-graev-lipson.html



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30/08/2025

Your weekly reminder to consider Assay when sending out submissions this upcoming fall!

We are looking for:
🔎Academic scholarship on nonfiction texts, techniques, and authors
🔎Informal discussions of craft elements, book reviews, or nonfiction authors
🔎Formal and informal pedagogy that addresses all levels of students
🔎Brief analytical pedagogy for In The Classroom Blog
🔎Nonfiction Syllabi

View our full submission guidelines and submit your work here: https://www.assayjournal.com/submit.html

Or visit the link in our bio!



Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

29/08/2025

Yellow Arrow Journal closes for submission on August 31st. Don’t miss out!

Yellow Arrow Journal is a biannual publication of creative nonfiction, poetry, and cover art by writers and artists who identify as women.

Submission Guidelines
✨accepted submissions include creative nonfiction and poetry by authors identifying as women
✨submissions must relate to the theme of KAIROS, as interpreted by the author (provided guiding available at the link below)
✨Creative nonfiction must be between 100 and 2,000 words
✨No previously published work will be accepted at this time
✨To submit to KAIROS, send an email to [email protected]

Read complete guidelines and submit here: https://www.yellowarrowpublishing.com/submissions



Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash

28/08/2025

This Throwback Thursday, we’re revisiting Assay issue 2.2 with Miles Harvey’s essay “We Are All Travel Writers, We Are All Blind.” In this thought-provoking piece, Harvey reflects on what 21st-century essayists can learn from philosopher William James: that even the most worldly travelers, and by extension, writers, remain blind to the full truth of what they observe. Through James’s Amazon expedition and early wanderings, Harvey illuminates the ethical responsibility of nonfiction writers to acknowledge their limits, reckon with bias, and approach others with humility.

“In a photograph he posed for during a journey to Brazil in 1865, William James looks every bit the rugged adventurer. With his Panama hat, cooler-than-thou sunglasses and air of unkempt elegance, he comes off as the gritty forefather of bohemian globetrotters such as George Orwell, Eric Newby, Isak Dinesen, Freya Stark, Paul Theroux, Jon Krakauer and Sebastian Junger. But as James himself would have said—indeed, as he built a whole career out of saying—first impressions can be deceiving, especially when it comes to the inner lives of other human beings.”

Read the article here: https://www.assayjournal.com/miles-harvey-we-are-all-travel-writers-we-are-all-blind-22.html



Photo Credit: Houghton Library, Harvard University

27/08/2025

This week we’re shining a spotlight on Marya Hornbacher’s essay “The World Is Not Vague: Nonfiction and the Urgency of Fact” from Assay issue 5.1. In this essay, Hornbacher argues that nonfiction isn’t just a stylistic choice, but it’s a moral commitment to precision, honesty, and deeper understanding. She explores how nonfiction writers offer readers more than facts: they forge trust, bear witness, and illuminate a world that demands clarity and care in its telling

“Facts have edges; they don’t bleed into one another, there’s no penumbra of shadow where they overlap; one is never a little bit pregnant, or sort of dead, and there are no alternative facts. Truth isn’t like that; it’s not a fixed point, absolute zero, true north. It has dimension and angles and depth; it unfolds outward geometrically, like space; and like space, truth is expanding.”

Read the article here: https://www.assayjournal.com/marya-hornbacher-the-world-is-not-vague-nonfiction-and-the-urgency-of-fact-51.html



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26/08/2025

☀️New Interview Alert!☀️

Julie Marie Wade interviews Laura Julier on her lyric memoir “Off Izaak Walton Road: The Grace That Comes Through Loss,” winner of the 2023 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. Julier reflects on inhabiting a remote cabin beside the Iowa River surrounded by silence, snow, and wildlife to reckon with grief and loss. She shares how form and process emerged organically from the landscape and emotional terrain, shaping a memoir that attends to the contours of sorrow, healing, and the quiet resilience of hope.

“I didn’t want any focus on myself. I resisted that for a long time. But once I understood that I was very much a part of this story, it still took a long time to figure out what the point was. Finally, a very smart writer—my spouse, before they were my spouse—said to me, ‘You think this is a book about nature, but it’s really a book about how nature healed you. It’s about how you can research and analyze yourself endlessly, but in the end, you need time to metabolize loss and make sense of its boundaries.’ I remember standing dead still in shock when I heard that: I both didn’t want to hear it, and at the same time, realized it was true in a way I did not (yet) know how to make happen.”

Read the complete interview here: https://www.assayjournal.com/laura-julier.html



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25/08/2025

This Pedagogy Monday, we’re highlighting Emma Howes and Christian Smith’s essay “'You have to listen very hard': Contemplative Reading, Lectio Divina, and Social Justice in the Classroom.” In this piece, the authors invite students to slow down and practice deep, contemplative reading (rooted in lectio divina) to nurture empathy, sharpen attention, and engage more ethically with nonfiction texts on race and justice. Through pauses, silence, and thoughtful listening, they model how reading can become an ethical act of connection and critical awareness.

“We strove to foster moments that a faster reading practice might have made difficult to access; we sought places where pause might open the reading for critical thinking and rhetorical listening.”

Read it here: https://www.assayjournal.com/emma-howes--christian-smith-you-have-to-listen-very-hardrdquo-contemplative-reading-lectio-divina-and-8203social-justice-in-the-classroom-32.html



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25/08/2025

Tis the season, so if you've got students writing craft papers, you might find this useful!

Welcome to Practical Notes, a new series on In the Classroom, in which we address various practical aspects of the writing world. I first encountered a craft paper during my first semester of my M…

23/08/2025

Submit to Assay! Our submission portal is open all year round!

We are looking for:
🌟Academic scholarship on nonfiction texts, techniques, and authors
🌟Informal discussions of craft elements, book reviews, or nonfiction authors
🌟Formal and informal pedagogy that addresses all levels of students
🌟Brief analytical pedagogy for In The Classroom Blog
🌟Nonfiction Syllabi

View our full submission guidelines and submit your work here: https://www.assayjournal.com/submit.html

Or visit the link in our bio!



Photo by Mark Basarab on Unsplash