Longform CNF

Author’s Note “An essay about adoptee narratives in fiction!” Yes, that was the essay I wanted to write. I was revising my novel about a mom navigating identity, both as an adoptee and as a caregiver, and it was a topic I wanted to explore. I had the piece all planned out, was working with a mentor in my MFA program, and even had interviews scheduled with some amazing authors. Just as I dove into my research, my family went into crisis. I didn’t write for months. I didn’t sleep for months.

Author’s Note It’s an old folk tale: a group of blind men encounter an elephant, and each comes away with a different story of what an elephant is. So it was with my family. In our case, the elephant was a war—a sudden invasion of the country that we had made our home. I was six, my sister was eight, my mother thirty-six, and my father forty-one. My memories of that time are vivid but impressionistic: flashes of images, scenes, sensations.

Christian Bodney’s “What I Do and Don’t Remember from the Days and Nights of Endlessly Smoking Crack and Shooting Heroin” is one of three winners of the 2022 CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Award, guest judged by Ingrid Rojas Contreras. “What I Do and Don’t Remember from the Days and Nights of Endlessly Smoking Crack and Shooting Heroin” is gritty, feverish, electric. What ensues from its title is a narrative of addiction in list form. The essay’s candor is scalding.