Learning to Trust the Making
Grace Talusan on where ideas come from
Classes are back in session, and so is The Reported Essay. I am excited to feature one of my favorite creative nonfiction writers, Grace Talusan, as our first newsletter guest of 2026.
Grace is the author of “The Body Papers,” which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction, and she serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle (currently as chair of the Autobiography committee), which recently announced its Longlists.
For The Reported Essay, we talked about finding your way into ideas for essays and books. You can also read more from Grace over at Nieman Storyboard next week, where she spoke to me about teaching creative nonfiction and drawing from writing exercises that help her students tune into the world around them.
As an assistant teaching professor of English at Brown University in Rhode Island, Grace is one of several instructors who teach “Introduction to Creative Nonfiction,” the school’s most popular humanities class. Our conversation took place before the tragic shooting at Brown on Dec. 13th, when a gunman killed two students and wounded nine others.
When I checked on Grace after the shooting, she was still shaken and coming to terms with the devastating events. She now plans to re-introduce a class, “Writing Wonder, Joy, and Awe,” which she created a few years ago as a direct response to the students’ inundation with wars, pandemics, and climate disasters. She hopes it will help her students begin to process their emotions.
Writing nonfiction can be a way to explore trauma, memory, love, and looming life questions, but figuring out where to start can feel daunting. Grace tells her students to write freely in her classes. They never have to share if they don’t want to. She believes in the process and where it takes you.
On Generating Ideas & ‘Stranger Things’
My own writing workshop this week begins with talking about ideas. Where do they come from? How do you find them? I’ve written about finding the longform idea before. This year for the newsletter, I will continue to ask writers about the “story hunt.” How do they know when they have an idea that could be an essay, a reported feature, a narrative, or a book?
I also want students to think about themes they are drawn to. For me, themes are the existential questions we are forever grappling with. I’m interested in how writers seem to return to the same ones, even if the stories through which they explore these themes are entirely different and unique.
It took me years to realize that the same core themes seem to run through my work, whether it’s a profile, an essay, a science story, a narrative feature, or a book: coming of age, memory, identity, everyday people encountering surprising and remarkable circumstances. These themes are pulled from experiences in my own life, even when I write about other people.
One of the most popular coming-of-age shows in the zeitgeist right now (and in my household) is the Netflix series “Stranger Things.” I’m a parent of a middle schooler who loves writing fantasy fiction and is a new fan of the show. We had fun binging some of the series, starting with the pilot, over the break, while also watching a few Master Class episodes from the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers. The screenwriters offered tips that echo Grace’s advice from our Q&A, about leaning on your own life, memories, and interests to generate ideas.
Nonfiction writers can learn from fiction writers, and one pointer the twins offer is to take some time to immerse yourself in the stories you love. For them, it’s movies and comic books. For nonfiction writers, this may include forms of fiction, nonfiction, longform, podcasts. The brothers then ask you to consider what connects all of these stories? What similar thread runs through them?
Next comes brainstorming. For the brothers, this involves letting your mind wander, listening to movie music, driving, taking a walk. It also inspires reflection. Thinking back on your life, moments with friends, stories you recall. At some point in this process for them, a merging of theme and plot occurs—the potential seed of a great idea.
The screenwriters keep lists of ideas, some good, some bad, kernels they may return to years later. I keep fragments of nonfiction ideas in my notes app—articles, random thoughts, themes, questions. Grace explores memories and life stories she has tested out by telling them to friends. The key, as Grace notes in our interview, is to trust yourself and the process, and to allow yourself the creative freedom to try.
Grace Talusan
Here is my interview with Grace, which has been edited for length and clarity. You can find her book, and others mentioned in this newsletter, on my Bookshop Page. And stay tuned to Nieman Storyboard next week for more writing insights from Grace.
