Genre: Creative Nonfiction

It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is a documentary directed by Amy J. Berg about the musician who died suddenly at the age of thirty in 1997, having only released one studio album, of which the single “Hallelujah,” a cover of Leonard Cohen’s song, was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. Buckley’s biological father, a folk musician who rose to fame in the 1960s, died at the age of twenty-eight, and Berg explores the enduring status and mythos created around artists’ lives cut short, the idea of a suspended perfection mixed with the incomplete feeling of never enough. Think of an artist who seems to exist in a mythical state, perhaps because their popularity was short-lived or due to a mysterious or debated circumstance in their life. Write an essay that examines your interest in your chosen subject and reflect on the stories surrounding their life that perpetuates its mystery.

In the new thriller miniseries Black Rabbit, created by Zach Baylin and Kate Susman, Jude Law plays a restaurateur whose life is turned upside down with the sudden return of his brother, played by Jason Bateman. Their historically fraught bond spins into a vortex of the consequences of past betrayals and catastrophes, and the violence of the criminal underworld. Write a personal essay that explores your relationship with a sibling or someone with whom you share a close, long-standing relationship that may have similar elements of inextricable intimacy and rivalry. Incorporate memories of the experiences that have tied you together, as well as circumstances that have been challenging because of your closeness. What are the differences in your personalities that might have, at varied times, created complementary, synergistic energy and also been the root cause of clashes?