By Jennifer Niesslein

I have a bit of personal bad news to share. I’ve been diagnosed with what’s classified as a head and neck cancer; I don’t want to go into it further publicly until I can process it better/write about it. It’s curable—(and let me emphasize this for my beloveds) CURABLE!—but the treatment (radiation and chemo) will be a rough ride. I thought this might a better year for me than last, what with Full Grown People coming back strong and my book out with some really nice reviews and a short essay I wrote that went maybe a teensy bit viral. Plus, I had a spell of unrelated breast cancer treatment at the end of 2021 and the beginning of this year, and I’d hoped that was the bad thing in my charmed life.

I’m telling you this to explain why FGP is going away—again—at least for the short term. Long-term, I don’t know. I don’t know how many times you can start and stop a publication. I don’t know what I’ll want my life to look like when I come out the other side of this. I’ll still be me of course, so it’ll be some combo of reading and writing and editing.

Until we meet again on the flip side, thanks for being such a stellar community!

xo, Jennifer

Last time I wrote to you all, I was threatening to write a book. Well, I did it (!), and it comes out in February. It’s called Dreadful Sorry: Essays on an American Nostalgia, and you can pre-order here or from your favorite bookseller. I’m very excited about it.

I’m also excited to be back in my natural habitat.

Next Thursday, we’re starting up again. Things will be a smidge different. Full Grown People will run on Thursdays (once a week rather than twice) and we’ll now pay the writers and staff photographer. I’ll be rolling out a membership program at some point, but right now, I’m still getting my internet legs back.

To avoid FOMO, be sure to sign up for notifications if you haven’t before. See you on September 30!

It’s that time of year again when editors mail in their nominations for The Pushcart Prize. We each get six picks and untold hours of gnashing of teeth.

Congratulations to this year’s FGP Pushcart nominees!

Deborah Linder’s “Familiar”

While I like these men, and while I have tried so hard to make myself likeable, nay, loveable, to them, I’m not sure there’s a space we can all inhabit. I’m suddenly skeptical that the overlap between my life and theirs is enough for a real relationship to ever develop. Not now, not after so many years. Any scientist will tell you that blood is a weak binding agent. Without the underpinning of a shared history, does our kinship offer anything other than a possible source for a replacement kidney?

Amanda J. Crawford’s “Other People’s Clothes”

The second time I left my husband, I left with nothing but my purse. It was sitting in a room on the other side of the house with my cell phone and keys inside when he held me in a room and told me, “You will never leave this house on your own two legs again.”

Magin LaSov Gregg’s “To Punctuate”

Last year, when my husband and I joined the Women’s March on Washington, I told my father I’d be “out of pocket” that day. He never asked what I’d be doing, just like I never asked him if he actually voted for Trump. I simply assumed so because of the giant Trump sticker on the rear window of his car.

Jennifer James’s “Stars in the Sky”

A year earlier, I’d still been nuts but in a much more manageable way.

Patrice Gopo’s “Blueberry Season”

“We need to go to Alaska,” I say to my girl. “We need to travel to a place with a real winter.” I think of Anchorage, where I come from, the city I left twenty years ago.

Jody Mace’s “Weird, Loud, Smelly World”

Somehow, we’ve gotten this idea that we have a right to never be disturbed by other people, to never be offended.

Most of these essays are accompanied by photos by the wonderful Gina Easley. Let’s have a hand for her, too!

 

By Jennifer Niesslein

Some news, sweets: I’m taking a hiatus. I truly love the Full Grown People community (I swear, I feel as if I know some of you just from your comments!), but we’ve been at it for almost five years now, and I need a break. I’m going to focus on my own writing, among other things—I’m hoping to write another book, but I’ve threatened this before, so we’ll see.

For writers who have sent work through Submittable and haven’t heard back yet, I’m working on refunding your fee.

If you need a reading fix, check out the writers’ bios. A lot of them have books out or coming out soon. And if you don’t have Full Grown People’s Greatest Hits: Volume 1 or Soulmate 101 and Other Essays on Love and Sex, they’re on sale now for ten bucks apiece.

Thank you all for making the last five years so incredibly fulfilling. I’ll see you when I get back!

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JENNIFER NIESSLEIN is the founder and editor of Full Grown People. To read her writing and stuff, go to JenniferNiesslein.com.

 2017 has not been my favorite year—although I’m ever grateful for the readers and contributors to FGP. You’ve all been bright lights for me.

This year has also made me glom on to the moments that have brought me joy. One of those moments happened with my youngest nephews, who are—like me—big fans of Mad Libs. Over Thanksgiving, we didn’t have any handy, so I wrote some.

I figured that, hey, if any of you are goofballs like we are, you might enjoy one, too.

So grab some scratch paper. The story is in the first comment. Please add your results—that’s the best part, isn’t it?

Fellow goofball or not, here’s to a fabulous 2018!

xo,

Jennifer

1. You or person you know
2. FGP writer’s name
3. Holiday
4. Food
5. Body Part
6. Body Part
7. Adjective
8. Occupation
9. Exclamation
10. Verb
11. Adjective
12. Number
13. Emotion
14. Plural noun
15. Verb
16. Location
17. Plural noun

By Jennifer Niesslein

It’s that time again, when editors across the land reread what they’ve published in the last year, then drive themselves bonkers trying to compare all the apples and oranges and figs and molten lava cakes and palak paneers and potato salads and bánh baos they published in the last year. Editors of small presses get six nominations for each year’s Pushcart Prize, and I take it seriously.

I’m excited to present FGP’s Pushcart nominees for this year.

Laura Giovanelli’s “The Size of a Memory, the Size of a Heart”

I am going to be a mother, and all I can think about is my father.

Jody Mace’s “Schrödinger’s Horn”

It seems like there’s only one right answer. I have to keep him safe. But it’s so much more complicated. It’s difficult to know at any given moment if he should no longer be doing something he used to be able to handle.

JJ Mulligan’s “Transference”

My wife left the appointment satisfied with the pediatrician’s explanation—seizures left her mind—and ready to ignore our daughter’s future fist clenching scenes and moments of rage when they should start to appear. I, on the other hand, was distraught; I knew that the pediatrician didn’t have the full story and neither did my wife.

Catherine Newman’s “Just. Don’t.”

Something is wrong with me, only I don’t know what it is. Or how to fix it. In the middle of the day or night, rage fizzes up inside my ribcage. It burns and unspools, as berserk and sulfuric as those black-snake fireworks from childhood: one tiny pellet, with seemingly infinite potential to create dark matter—dark matter that’s kind of like a magic serpent and kind of like a giant ash turd. This is how it is for me right now.

Hema Padhu’s “Coming Home”

I felt her papery lips kiss me on both cheeks and sensed in her touch both excitement and trepidation as if she couldn’t believe she had crossed the ocean to visit her daughter in America. The country I had chosen over my birthplace. The country I now called home and to which she had lost me almost fifteen years ago.

María Joaquina Villaseñor’s “Rent”

Today, almost thirty years later, I long to remember the faces or names or stories of others who were in that safe house with us, experiencing something similar.

Each of these is accompanied by the brilliant photography of Gina Easley, who keeps FGP looking good.

If you haven’t read these, you have a damn good Thursday ahead of you!

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JENNIFER NIESSLEIN is the founder and editor of Full Grown People.

By Jennifer Niesslein

The literary community lost a brilliant essayist in William Bradley. For those of us who knew (or “knew” him, via his writing) him, we’ve also lost a great man. After I learned of his death, I wrote to his good friend Christian Exxo that they had the kind of friendship I wish for my son. By that, I meant that they were two guys who are and were ardent feminists, who shared a thriving life of the mind, who (I imagine) weren’t afraid to express love for each other. He was, to my mind, a model of modern masculinity.

Dinty W. Moore has written a fabulous account over at Brevity of William’s accomplishments, and there were many. William’s book Fractals blew me away.

William was my favorite kind of writer, someone who could make me crack up and mist over in the same essay. I published every piece he sent me. He wrote about his mortality often; his health was an ongoing concern after surviving cancer as a younger man. He loved both high culture and pop culture, including soaps, horror flicks, and comic books. Maybe because of this, I pegged him as a super-hero, invincible despite his ongoing health issues.

When I think of William’s life, though, I think of it as a love story. He loved deeply, and most especially his wife Emily Isaacson. Every one of his FGP essays was, I think, a love letter to her. He was cerebral and silly; hilarious without being cynical. It’s hard for me to separate William the writer from William the person because he was so forthright, both when I’d email him questions I had no business asking and when he’d post on Facebook with his characteristic humor and truth.

William was well-loved. For all of us who want to hang out with him a little longer: William Bradley’s FGP essays.

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JENNIFER NIESSLEIN is the founder and editor of Full Grown People.

Hi lovelies,

I’m taking off some time to spend it with my son, who’s heading off to college later this month. (Hey! Another awkward age for me!) I’ll be reading and responding to submissions—I know I’m behind.

We’ll be back after Labor Day. If I survive dorm shopping.

xo,

Jennifer

You’re going to watch and talk about the Comey testimony on Thursday. I get it.

But keep your eyes (and, if you’re a subscriber, your in-boxes) peeled for a special Sunday essay.