In this episode of Backspace: Essays on Everything, host Michelle Kennedy dives into Ernest Hemingway’s timeless essay The Art of the Short Story—a behind-the-scenes look at how Papa approached storytelling, discipline, and emotional restraint on the page.

What can modern writers learn from his brutal clarity and iceberg theory? 
Why does so much of what he doesn’t say still cut to the bone?

Tune in as Michelle unpacks Hemingway’s six rules for writing, reflects on their relevance today, and explores how the short story remains a radical form of art in an attention-deficit world. Whether you're a writer, a lit nerd, or just Hemingway-curious, this episode is a love letter to craft, clarity, and the quiet revolution of the short form. 

📚 Mentioned in the episode:

• The Art of the Short Story by Ernest Hemingway
• The iceberg theory
• Hemingway’s writing habits and discipline
• Michelle’s favorite short stories (and why they still work)

🔗 Subscribe for more literary deep dives, personal essays, and reflections on writing and life.

 #Hemingway #ShortStories #WritingTips #Podcast #Literature #BackspacePodcast #MichelleKennedy

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In this episode of Backspace: Essays on Everything, writer and narrator Michelle Kennedy reads Joan Didion’s luminous essay Holy Water, a meditation on infrastructure, awe, and the strange poetry of control. Michelle also shares her personal reflections on Didion’s work, the beauty of paying attention, and what it means to slow down in a world that rarely allows it. If you love literary essays, quiet revelations, or simply the power of a well-read voice, this episode is for you.

🔸 Holy Water originally appeared in Didion’s 1992 essay collection, After Henry
🔸 Narrated and discussed by Michelle Kennedy, author of Without a Net
🔸 Subscribe for more literary readings, personal essays, and conversations about writing, voice, and meaning 💻 Learn more at https://mishkennedy.com
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Slow the fuck down.

This is my movement.

Slow the fuck down. I have to tell myself this now. Mostly because I just don’t have the physical energy to keep up with my brain now, in my 50’s. But I used to. And I exhausted myself more than once doing it. Slow the fuck down. The only thing I can still do as fast as my brain wants it to is type. I can get frantic. I have been frantic. Many times. Or I’ve felt it but you didn’t see it because I am so good at hiding my freneticism. Sometimes I feel it. Like my body wants to be frantic - and I have no reason to be. For many years, my life was frantic whether I wanted it to be that way or not. With eight kids total and usually 4 or 5 or 6 underfoot at any given time, I am used to being busy.

Read the rest here!

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This is a delightful essay in that the author is not at all delighted by nature - at least not here. This essay wholly embraces not nature writing. And it is a study of nature and how we think of it. Humanly.

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In this conversation, Michelle Kennedy explores Mark Twain's essay 'Taming the Bicycle,' reflecting on the humorous yet profound journey of learning to ride a bicycle. She discusses the anxieties and challenges faced during the learning process, the importance of guidance, and the broader implications of learning and personal growth. The conversation intertwines themes of writing, authenticity, and the evolution of machines in our lives, ultimately leading to a deeper understanding of mastery and experience.




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Definitely tune into this one - have 20 minutes to kill waiting for a kid to come back from practice? Sitting in traffic? Driving to the store? This one is a bit longer - 20 minutes - but it's good. And the stories are fantastic - and hopefully I read it well enough for you to enjoy it.

From the essay: George Orwell's Why I Write: "The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money."

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David Foster Wallace is one of those writers for me. He’s one I wanted to be like. There are others. But I have identified over the years with Wallace because he always seemed so sad. When I read that he had hung himself almost 20 years ago now, I remember feeling like I was sad, but not surprised. 

Having struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts myself over the years, it doesn’t feel strange to me when someone does it. Sometimes, I’m jealous. Not often anymore, as I feel like I’ve gotten past that particular hump. The desire to be gone is more rare for me now - maybe with the knowledge that it’s coming closer to the time when it will end anyway. How many years might I have left? 20? 30? Do I want 40? Do I want to be 92? 

That’s for another essay.

David Foster Wallace was one of the more versatile writers and yet, I always feel like I’m on a front porch or cozy in a living room when I read his words. I feel like I’m being bestowed information I did not previously have. 

After he died, D.T. Max wrote this about him in The New Yorker. 

The Unfinished

He was only forty-six when he killed himself, which helped explain the sense of loss readers and critics felt. There was also Wallace’s outsized passion for the printed word at a time when it looked like it needed champions. His novels were overstuffed with facts, humor, digressions, silence, and sadness. He conjured the world in two-hundred-word sentences that mixed formal diction and street slang, technicalese and plain speech; his prose slid forward with a controlled lack of control that mimed thought itself.

“What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant,” he wrote in “Good Old Neon,” a story from 2001. Riffs that did not fit into his narrative he sent to footnotes and endnotes, which he liked, he once said, because they were “almost like having a second voice in your head.”

The sadness over Wallace’s death was also connected to a feeling that, for all his outpouring of words, he died with his work incomplete. Wallace, at least, never felt that he had hit his target. His goal had been to show readers how to live a fulfilled, meaningful life. “Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being,” he once said. Good writing should help readers to “become less alone inside.” 
I felt a lot less alone as a writer - as a person - and really, I laughed a lot because being the mother of eight children and the mother - I guess - of 17 books, I feel this essay so acutely.Please remember DFW with me and listen to The Nature of the Fun. 


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In this essay, Michelle reads Joan Didion's reflections on the nature of keeping a notebook, exploring the compulsive urge to document thoughts and experiences. She delves into the complexities of memory, the subjective nature of reality, and the personal significance of her notes. 


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Yes - they’re all mine.

“Are they all yours??” I used to get this incredulous question often in the old days - or at least - my old days…you know…back in the 1990’s. I always wanted to answer something like, “No. This one I found by the side of the road and this one won’t leave us alone.” But I think that stuff is probably funnier in my head. 

My old days had me up at 3:30 am nursing whichever baby I had going then. I have been actively mothering for 32 years now. I have 8 kids and while I have never had all eight living under my roof at one time - Matt, the oldest, was 21 by the time Ani, the youngest, was born - I know what it is to corral four or five littles at a time into a fair, a store, any event anywhere actually. I know what it is to live with a teenager or two or three at a time while simultaneously changing diapers and wearing kids on my back. 

A woman I don’t know recently wrote an article in The New Yorker, I think, about women who are well-educated and who have a lot of kids. Basically, it was why would you do that. I haven’t gotten to read it yet, as it’s behind a paywall, but I found myself - sadly - lingering in the comments section on Facebook. Ugh. I know. But…well, I couldn’t help myself. And there it was. Breeders. Can’t believe people would do this to children. Do what, exactly? I wonder and always  I had one or two or three and it was too much for me. So many people, so negative about having a lot of kids. Accusing us of having older kids parent the youngers. For what purpose, I’m not exactly sure.  The Duggars did not do large families any service. 

Listen in...

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"I have seen hundreds of ghost crabs in other settings, but suddenly I was filled with the odd sensation that for the first time I knew the creature in its own world.” 

Rachel Carson brings us to the edge of the ocean and the space in between in this marvelous essay. It reminded me of my own times at the beach, in particular, my introduction to the ocean when I was very young. 

If you would like to contribute an essay, contribute a suggestion or a thought or whatever - please visit http://mishkennedy.com or email [email protected]

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