Hobart and William Smith Colleges

by Sarah Minor

I want my essays to motion toward dissection, to investigate and develop ideas. I want my reader to act as an accomplice rather than a witness. There are some images I want to eat, too.

Art and language seem so integral to my thinking process that I cannot help but make work that involves their combination. Incorporating visual form seems to be my way of designating a physical space in my writing for readers to mentally wander within. I try to employ formal elements as a means of constraining and directing a reader's attention while providing enough room for them to bring their own associative processes to the work. This may be why I've worked in installation formats that can contain and engage viewers bodily as well as intellectually.

As happens in most of my essays, the form of "A Cross-Sectional Analysis: Slides and Lecture Notes" developed and refined itself in tandem with the text. For me, this means that the form and content feel required of one another. This essay hints at its own process—an engagement in ekphrasis. Within the piece I try to understand the particular draw I feel toward cross-sections, in part by attempting to incite that same experience in others.

Sarah Minor is from the great state of Iowa. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she lives and makes visual essays. Her work can be found on Word Riot, in Conjunctions, and is forthcoming in South Loop Review, Black Warrior Review, and soon at sarahceniaminor.com.

 

Originally appeared in the online supplement to the Beyond Category issue 43.2 - 44.1