“The Specter of the Confessional”

November 23, 2014

“The specter of the confessional haunts all first-person writing, and women’s writing in particular,” but perhaps “the instinct to insert [the self] comes from a place of saying, ‘I’m not an expert, I’m just a person; let me show you where I’m situated here in this thing I’m telling you about.'” Our own Lydia Kiesling writes about Meghan Daum, Lena DunhamLeslie Jamison and the confessional impulse in nonfiction for Salon.

is a staff writer for The Millions. She lives in New York and every so often writes things at kaulielewis.wordpress.com.