A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form

by Brenda Miller

A Braided Heart provides a friendly, personal, and smart guide to the writing life. It also offers clear and original instruction on craft elements at the forefront of today’s emerging forms in creative from the short-short, to the braided form, to the hermit crab essay. An acknowledged expert in these forms, Brenda Miller gives writers practical advice on how to sustain and invigorate their writing practice, while also encouraging readers to explore their own writing lives.

“Brenda Miller writes so beautifully in these lyrical and ‘braided’ essays—personal meditations that take us deep into the miracle of writing itself. Her eye is always alert, her ear wonderfully tuned to the nuances of perception. The art of the essay is alive and well in her hands.”
 —Jay Parini, author of  Borges and Me

Genres: Essays, Writing, Crafts, Nonfiction

148 pages, Paperback

Published July 12, 2021

About the author

Brenda Miller is the author of Season of the Body and co-author of Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction Her newest collection of essays, Blessing of the Animals, is forthcoming from Eastern Washington University Press. Her work has received five Pushcart Prizes and has been published in many journals, including Fourth Genre, Creative Nonfiction, The Sun, Utne Reader, The Georgia Review, and The Missouri Review.

She currently lives in Bellingham, WA, with her dog Abbe and her cat Madrona, both of whom are acting as muses for her next book, where she is an Associate Professor of English at Western Washington University and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Bellingham Review.

Reviews

[Constance · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC - Enjoyed learning about forms of essays. The author shines when she talks about her own writing experiences. A great book that lets you learn how to think like a writer.

[Alexander Wolff · Rating 3 out of 5]

What most stands out to me is "The Shape of Emptiness," the flash piece from Brevity that led me to this collection. Brenda Miller is an outstanding writer, and I've no doubt about that. But I found this book not quite structured enough to be considered a craft book; simultaneously, it was too craft-oriented for it to be an effective memoir.

Brenda Miller is certainly a "sunny" writer—lavender, chamomile tea, yoga, and all—but I felt that this book left no impression. The analysis of the flash piece about the sloth was useful, but I found this collection lacking substance.

That being said, "The Shape of Emptiness" is the best flash nonfiction piece I've read in my life, and I'm an editor of nearly two years now.

[Kelly Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miller’s talent is to make the structure of her lyrical essays feel natural, as if they couldn’t read any other way. “Writing Inside the Web” connects a story about a Free Box at a lodge, to a writing retreat, to a list of internal brain machinations, to Simon and Garfunkel...

Full review at Brevity here:

https://brevity.wordpress.com/2021/10...

[Wendy Fontaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent craft book on the lyrical form of essays. The author includes glimpses into her writing life and teaching life, examinations of why certain lyrical forms are freeing rather than limiting, along with breakdowns of her own pieces, including Swerve and We Regret To Inform You (two of my favorites).

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this slender volume as an introduction to collage essays, braided essays, and hermit crab essays. It was a quick read, and I'm looking forward to reading more from this author.

[Belle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly useful for anyone unfamiliar with Miller's work, but I think it pales in comparison to Tell It Slant—all the ideas in A Braided Heart won't be new to anyone who's read her previous book.

[Melissa D'Haene · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful study of the essay and the many forms it takes.

[Sara Stamey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely braiding together of personal insights and writing techniques.

Brenda Miller has done it again! Noted for promoting the braided essay, in this collection of essays she demonstrates through personal insights and examples of writing exercises how her approach to nonfiction opens up unexpected doorways into creativity. I loved her encounters with famous authors, weird writing retreats, and weirder New Age communes, all of which has fed her life, writing, and teaching. Since I write and taught fiction, I wasn't sure that her nonfiction approaches would be relevant to me, but I was wrong. Her all-encompassing approach to tapping the Muse is a winner!