Jill Bialosky

Essays

Grief Is a Forever Thing

The New York Times, Nov. 27, 2022

Ms. Bialosky is the author of “History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life.”

My 21-year-old sister ended her life on April 16, 1990. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t think of her. In my mind, she is as vibrant as the last day I saw her, and she is often in my dreams. She will always be 21, and I will always regret that she did not find a way to get help. I’m sure if she did, she would be alive today.

Read more
Writing in the Nooks and Crannies of the Day or Night

Catapult, September, 2022

Writing requires solitude so that the ghosts will come unencumbered.

Read more
When Art Inspires Agency: On Fictional Characters Who Find Motivation in Beauty

Literary Hub, September 6, 2022

Jill Bialosky Recommends E.M. Forster, E.L. Konigsburg, Lisa Hsiao Chen, and More

In my own forthcoming novel, The Deceptions, the Greek and Roman statues, and their representations, give my character agency and move the narrative forward. Here are five novels, all from different milieux, that use art— whether in a museum, a church, a city, a drawing room, or a catalog—to inspire a result in a meaningful and unexpected way.

Read more
What It's Like to Lose a Mother While the World Is Mourning

Oprah Mag, September, 2020

I was dependent upon my mother’s voice, her smile, her happiness to see me.

Read more
For My Mother’s FaceTime Burial, Lipstick and Howling Winds

The New York Times, April 15, 2020

In Jewish tradition the body must be buried within 24 hours. I fight with myself about whether to travel to Cleveland.

Read more
Two Kinds of Goodbyes

Slate, September 2015

Read more
When the editor becomes the writer: logistics, imagination, and anxiety of working on both sides of the book

Literary Hub, August 2015

“I find a great deal of freedom in letting go of the imaginative work and diving into the editorial work. The two enterprises are completely different. As a writer, I am serving my imagination. As an editor, I am serving the author’s imagination. Editing per se is not a creative act on the page. It is a response to creativity.”

Read more
The unreasoning mask: the shared interior architecture of poetry and memoir

Kenyon Review, Spring 2013

“If the persistence of memory keeps the memoirist and poet in its stronghold to create an authentic work of art, great personal risk must also be at stake to give the work its sense of urgency. Personal risk involves employing dangerous subject matter—what you dare say! The best poems and memoir are born out of risk.”

Read more