Non-fiction entrants take on “What we Owe”
The theme for SFR’s 2021 Writing Contest nonfiction category came from one staffer’s recent reading of What We Owe to Each Other, by philosopher T M Scanlon. We envisioned entries that might opine on how to rebuild the fractured society in which we find ourselves, and though the responses struck our guest judge as unconventional, she also found them “deep.”
“They were just totally different approaches than I would have thought of,” says former state senator Dede Feldman, whose memoir, Ten More Doors: Politics and the Path to Change published this fall. “My response was far more mundane. Wear a mask...something tangible. These essays were so much more than that.”
Indeed, first-place winner Janna Lopez rejected the theme altogether but did so in a way that leaves readers pondering significant questions. Second place Joe Cooke presents the questions of Japanese Naikan, and sentences ending in question marks are even pervasive as Jackson Buckley deconstructs selfhood.
“Be patient,” writes Ranier Marie Rilke, “toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.”
Later the poet admonished readers to “live the questions.”
We’re down with that.
(Julie Ann Grimm)
FIRST PLACE
“What We Don’t Owe”
By Janna Lopez
What We Owe.
What a peculiar prompt. First proper ode to the notion of owing.
I read the literal definitions of ‘owe’ and...
Read Full Story: https://www.sfreporter.com/news/coverstories/2021/12/01/sfr-writing-contest-part-2/
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