Simply put, meta-writing is writing that is self-conscious, self-reflective, and aware of itself as an artifice. The writer is aware she's writing, a…

- Jill Talbot

One of my friends who writes novels says that once the book is published, it's a separate thing from you; it becomes its own. I feel that way when I …

- Jill Talbot

We read the world - television, movies, songs, books - and the people in it through the lens of our own lives.

- Jill Talbot

When I admire a writer, it's for the recognizable palette - Hemingway's minimalism, the dialogue, those isolated bar scenes. But with each story or n…

- Jill Talbot

Nick Flynn is another writer I admire - his fragmented sections, his playfulness with genre, his urgency. The palette in his work is his style, a voi…

- Jill Talbot

How long do we live in the fictions of our past? And how do we convince anyone that who we write is not necessarily who we are?

- Jill Talbot

There's a moment in Sarah Manguso's The Guardians when she writes, "I try not to make anything up, and I fail every time." I get giddy when I come ac…

- Jill Talbot

It's been very jarring for me to stand in public and read about myself and my daughter and her father. I feel like I'm reading someone else's story, …

- Jill Talbot

I like to think about the genre, the essay or the memoir, as much as I enjoy writing within its fluid parameters. And teaching allows me to think abo…

- Jill Talbot