NonfictioNOW 2021 Panel: Essaying the Impasse

Jessica L. Wilkinson, David Carlin, Sophie Cunningham, Alvin Pang

Most writers are familiar with the impasse—a supposed dead-end point, where one is unable to move forward, for whatever reason, with a writing project. Critic Lauren Berlant writes: “The impasse is a space of time lived without a narrative genre.” Yet the impasse is not necessarily an unproductive space; a situation of frustration or defeat might equally become an opportunity for reconfiguration or, at least, quiet pause and reflection. Nonfiction is the genre that grows out of negation and wonders at the limits of the real: here, the impasse affords a space/time of/for play, a zone of ghosts, inheritances, serendipity and visions. Both troubled and enticed by the impasse, the four writers on this panel collectively explore what dwelling in this “space of time” might make of nonfiction; hosting the audience within this space, the panel proposes the impasse as a source of nonfiction vitality. (*Might include seance.)

Source: https://www.nonfictionow.org/