Genre: Creative Nonfiction

For the past several decades, artist Gordon Henderson, also known as Nib Geebles, has created yearly calendars featuring pen-and-paint illustrations of unremarkable yet distinctive buildings that he and his partner Abira Ali see on their everyday walks around their local Los Angeles neighborhoods. Hand-painted signage, unpolished and derelict storefronts, strip-mall parking lots, powerlines, and graffiti are all celebrated in this year’s “Unknown Landmarks” calendar. Brainstorm and jot down a list of some of your favorite storefronts and facades that make up the landscape where you live or work. Write a lyric essay that details a handful of these sights, reflecting on how they create a vivid portrait of your local atmosphere. What are the small, distinguishing or idiosyncratic features that give these locales an “unknown landmark” status?

Scientists studying chacma baboons in Namibia have recently reported findings that seem to demonstrate young baboons expressing feelings of jealousy, particularly in situations where they encounter their mothers grooming a younger sibling. One researcher observed a jealous baboon’s use of trickery, luring her sister away from her mother by pretending to play with her and then taking her spot in her mother’s arms. Think back to an incident in your own life when you felt jealous because attention was being paid to someone else. Write a personal essay that reflects on your emotions at the time and your relationships with each of the people involved. You might meditate on more general ideas of jealousy as well—are there possible benefits of it from an evolutionary standpoint?

“I sit hunched over an open folder, I peer at Lorraine Hansberry’s cursive script, neat and sharp like the thoughts in her eyes,” writes Tisa Bryant in Residual (Nightboat Books, March 2026), an experimental memoir written in the aftermath of her mother’s death in which she includes works by Black women who haunt her meditations and creative work. Bryant writes toward a “shared Black imaginary” as she moves through reflections on art, loss, and literature. Begin composing a hybrid essay that incorporates elements of memoir and criticism by first brainstorming a list of people who haunt your thinking—you might jot down writers and artists you admire, or figures from fiction and nonfiction works. Write a series of vignettes in which you explore these specters while observing how they have infiltrated your personal life. Allow yourself to delve deep into diaristic details, perhaps even adding drawings or photographs.