Eaton Hamilton

Lee Gutkind on the road to creative nonfiction at LitHub.

I would have liked to see this essay acknowledge the democratization of literature with the advent of the internet. Marginalized voices were, sometimes for the first time, able to add their voices to literature’s mix. We began to see lit from disabled, queer, trans, non-binary, autistic and biwoc folks. (I hate the word “confessional” applied to lit, as it transfers a sense of blame to authors for abuse, illness and so on. Most of the things that have gone awry for us are not our fault.)

Did you know that in order to get published, I had to enter and win literary contests? It was the only way I could get my pieces noticed, the only time my work was judged on merit rather than name and identity.