True Story book cover

Drawn From Life

In our orchestra of Fiction, the occasional voice of Real Life adds a subtle, unforgettable counterpoint. Almost any story can be drawn from life, if only in the most tenuous or unintentional manner, but when an author sits down, with purpose, to spell out his own heart, a reader cannot help but take notice. In those instances, an author bares his soul more nakedly, more profoundly, if not always more honestly, and the resulting power can overwhelm even a mediocre storyteller.

“Write what you know”, they say, not because it will be more technically perfect but because it must be a more direct communication. And who among us is immune to the probing of shadows, the telling of secrets, whether cloaked in fiction’s garb or brazenly accosting us in a bare first-person? No one, and that explains the perennial appeal of ‘true confessions’, autobiographies, introspective essays and toilet graffiti.

Now, here for your delectation, are our stories large and small, awesome and ugly, but all from the deepest recesses of their authors’ psyches. Shhh. Don’t tell. It’s a secret.

“Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.”

~ Photographer Berenice Abbott