A Fighting Chance With the Chaos of Living

Novelist Keenan Norris on writing into a world that has no regard for us

Feb 12, 2025

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Often the path into good writing leads directly through territory that, if not for this urge to re-tell the traumatic, we would leave behind in the space somewhere between memory and forgetting.

Another MFA Lore special for Black History Month in 2025

Hi everyone,

As the shitstorm in DC intractably gathers force, I keep wondering how we could have arrived …

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A guest post by

Keenan Norris

I write & think about community college, California, race, work, writing craft, athletics... I'm a prof (SJSU, where I run the Steinbeck Fellows Program) and award-winning scribe (Nor-Cal Book Award, National A&E Journalism Award)