Time To Push Some Old Essay/Memoirs Onto The Reading Public

Yes, I'm in this picture

While on X/Twitter today, I noticed that it is now Bread Loaf Writers' Conference time. What a great excuse to remind the world about my old memoirish essay My Bread Loaf published long ago at The
Millions. It's about my even longer ago experience at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference where I...worked in the kitchen for three summers! At the time I wrote it, I thought my Bread Loaf experience was so unique and unusual because, as a general rule, when you hear about someone going there, they go on about how meaningful and literary and artie their experience there was. There are often pictures of the beautiful mountain scenery. I thought my kitchen pictures and experience were fascinating because they were so different.

I am alone in that, by the way. This memoir doesn't get a lot of attention when I toss it out into the world again.

These days, the incongruity factor of my Bread Loaf experience doesn't interest me as much as it used to. Now that I'm interested in writing about eating, the kitchen is far more meaningful to me. I was the pastry assistant to Aggie, the chain-smoking baker, and it was with her I learned about oatmeal bread. That was way too exotic for my family.

By the way, I'm working on a bread baking essay.

I used my Bread Loaf experience in another memoirish essay, not about bread baking, called Blackened Pans, published at The Bigger Picture. My time in the Bread Loaf kitchen has had a bigger impact on my writing than anything else I saw or did there.