The Assay Interview Project: Beth Ann Fennelly
April 1, 2026

Beth Ann Fennelly, a 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, was the poet laureate of Mississippi from 2016-2021 and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi.  She’s won grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Artists, a Pushcart, and a Fulbright to Brazil.  Fennelly has published three books of poetry and four of prose. Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs (W.W. Norton) was an Atlanta Journal Constitution Best Book.  Her newest book, The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs was published by Norton in February. A contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire and other outlets, she lives with her husband, Tom Franklin, and their three children in Oxford, MS. 
The Irish Goodbye is a collection of stand-alone memoirs, some microscopic in size, and all vast with emotion. Readers will delight in Fennelly’s characteristic “raised eyebrow” sensibility and her playfulness with language. Fennelly sharply renders the quotidian, alongside the difficult-to-speak. These memoirs draw attention to the levity and absurdity embedded in life’s experiences, even the most painful: her sister’s early death and her mother’s decline from Alzheimer’s. The shortest of the micro-memoirs uses only five words to comment on the physical effects of aging.
 
The Irish Goodbye harkens back to Fennelly’s previous collection of micro-memoirs, Heating and Cooling, and presents the reader with a recognizable cast of characters. A departure from Fennelly’s allegiance to the short-short in Heating and Cooling, The Irish Goodbye alternates between micro-memoirs and longer, essayistic explorations. The Irish Goodbye offers an entertaining and satisfying view of womanhood, sisterhood, motherhood, grief, marriage, aging, and vulnerability.
Nicole S. Piasecki: Hi Beth Ann! Congrats on your new book, The Irish Goodbye, your second collection of micro-memoirs.
 
The Irish Goodbye is simultaneously laugh-out-loud funny, insightful, serious, and heartbreaking. This book feels like it takes on a new level of vulnerability. There’s a sense that you’ve given everything to the reader, a beautiful, artistic everything.
 
Beth Ann Fennelly: Thanks, Nicole. I appreciate that. I think at this stage in my career I’m not interested in holding anything back or protecting myself or being coy. We're drawn to memoir to experience someone's essential humanity, without buffers and borders or falsity. If we want falsity, we go to social media. If we want someone to talk about their interior life openly and nakedly, we go to memoir.
 
NSP: Do you think about being vulnerable when you write? When you publish?
 
BAF: When I'm writing, I'm not thinking about the reader. I’m not thinking, Oh, what's this going to sound like to so-and-so? Is this going to be embarrassing?  Do I look fat in these pants? When I'm writing, I'm not asking myself those questions, because I'm not even thinking about a reader.
 
But later, when it comes time to publish, I do have a lot of hesitations and questions. For example, the closing essay in The Irish Goodbye, “Dear Viewer of My Naked Body,” is about posing nude for a well-respected artist: I knew that would be weird for my children, as we live in a conservative town in a conservative state. And there are complications to that kind of revelation, given that I have a public-facing job as a professor. I expect, always, to be judged harshly for my choices. I expect people to be horrified by my vulnerabilities, weaknesses, shame.
 
But, strangely, often the opposite thing happens. You admit to some dark feeling or shameful action, and other people say, Oh, I also have felt this ugly feeling. I've also had these crazy thoughts. You end up feeling that simply by the act of being read, you have a new friend, which is a very strange but kind of warm and wonderful.
 
NSP: Do you experience a different level of vulnerability when writing memoir than you do when writing poetry?
 
BAF: I do. It’s strange because my poems could be very autobiographical. You could read a poem that I’ve written about a woman in Mississippi who is a professor with three kids, and you would guess it was me. But if we talked about it, we would play this little game where we say, “Oh, the speaker in this poem . . .”  In these micro-memoirs, I drop that mask of the speaker, and I'm just Beth Ann, and everything I talk about is verifiably a fact. Nonfiction does open you up to a certain kind of scrutiny, and it does make you accountable for everything you’ve published in that genre. I know that’s both a gift and a burden of writing in nonfiction.
 
NSP: I want to ask you about the title. The title micro-memoir, “The Irish Goodbye” is one of the shortest pieces in the collection at only 18 words, a powerful 18 words about your sister’s death:
 
“How, without farewells, you slipped out the back door of the party of your life, o my sister.”

At what point in the process of writing this book, did you realize that that “The Irish Goodbye” would be your title, and did that piece guide your writing process along the way?
 
BAF: It was late in the writing process that I recognized “The Irish Goodbye” as my title. It didn't guide my composition process. It was retroactively applied in a way that gave a unity. What happened was, I couldn't think of a good title. I had a title. I didn't love it. My editor didn't love it, either, so I went back to the drawing board. I was brainstorming, and at one point it occurred to me that often people title their book after their most significant piece. I've seen people do that, and I like when people do that. I looked back at my collection for the most significant piece, and then I saw that short piece, a sentence fragment. I liked how that, in itself, was like an Irish goodbye—something that's over before you realize it's over.
 
NSP: On my second read of The Irish Goodbye, the book’s dedication hit even harder because I understood the ways this grounded the book. It set up the ache in the book’s exploration of loss but also the narrator’s playfulness with language. It reads:
 
“In memory of sister, and in memory of my mother’s memory.”
 
Can you speak to the role of that dedication in your writing process?
 
BAF: I was reckoning with these two significant sadnesses in my life, the sudden, early death of my sister, and the prolonged, miserable, agonizing death of my mother from Alzheimer's. I’m haunted by my sister’s death and actively processing my mother’s (she died in November, after the book was turned in). At the same time, I think that there are a lot of lighter moments in the book, moments of humor and whimsy. The two deaths are central preoccupations, but I hope they are balanced out and don’t overwhelm the book.
 
NSP: I've never seen a dedication like that before. It felt like a note to the reader that you would explore these great sadnesses but with your keen ability to find levity too. There are so many examples of this in the book, like the first line in “Prepping to Teach O’Connor while Visiting my Mother-in-Law.”
 
“My mother-in-law has dementia, and my husband’s mother-in-law also has dementia. My husband and I are married. What, I ask you, are the odds?”
 
Through playful language and voice, you can reveal a truth through creative indirection.
 
BAF: Thanks. Creative indirection—I like that. I know I can’t help finding humor or moments or levity among the big sadnesses. For example, in “Making Plans with Friends,” I talk about planning how I'm going to commit suicide if I develop dementia like my mother in old age. I have a plan with my friend, Lloyd, that we’ll help take each other out, so the piece is this really dark commentary on the nature of friendship. But it gets a funny addendum, because when my husband read that piece, he balked at the idea that I’d need Lloyd, as he thinks he’d be the one to be with me at the very end: [in “Married Love: Addendum to ‘Making Plans with Friends.’”].
 
Oh, sweetheart, you say. “You could never murder me. You love me too much to murder me.”
 
No, your husband says. I love you so much that I would murder you. It would have to be me, with you, at the very end, murdering you.
 
That’s the most romantic thing, you say, and mean it.
 
And then you both laugh for a long time.
 
I know that that's a crazy piece, but it's also exactly how it happened.  There's something in that piece that I know is really disturbing and also really funny (hopefully). It’s like what we were talking about with the dedication. There's that tension in there that says, I'm gonna feel all the sad feelings, but also feel them in my own way. My own way of approaching the world is always going to have a raised eyebrow.
 
NSP: Yeah! I love that. The raised eyebrow comes through in all your work!
 
I thought that piece about assisted suicide was interesting because it reveals a human desire for mercy—to not suffer at the end of life. There's something powerful about writing such casual dialogue about this deeply serious subject. The characters and the conversations make this “plan” strangely funny and bizarre.
 
BAF: It's like what we were just talking about with shame. If you don't voice it, you think you're the only person who's experienced it. By holding it to the light, you make it communal.
 
NSP: Yes, and then the secret feeling looks totally different when it meets the light and is no longer as powerful. Voicing it disarms the shame.
 
BAF: Yes!
 
NSP: You’ve become quite well-known for writing micro-memoirs. The Irish Goodbye includes micro-memoirs along with longer, essayistic, and outward looking pieces, like “The Stories We Tell About the Stories We Tell,” in which the narrator returns to the Czech Republic, a place she had gone at age 21 to teach English. Upon her return to the Czech Republic at age 42, she experiences a full-circle moment that reshapes her understanding of her own long-ago experiences.
 
I’m interested in knowing more about your “move” toward longer, more essayistic pieces in the collection and if you feel this is a direction you plan to lean into with future creative nonfiction work.
 
BAF: During the years when I was writing The Irish Goodbye, I had several books in progress. I was writing micro-memoirs, very much in the line of Heating and Cooling. I was also working on first-person, voice-driven essays about various topics like hummingbird banding and Southern music and the cognitive benefits of reading—all my wacky strange passions on display, a bunch of diverse, research-based topics. And I was writing poems (I’m usually writing poems occasionally at least). And finally I was writing these longer, more meditative personal essays.
 
At some point, I had a lovely writing residency at Loghaven Residency in Tennessee. While there, I intended to write a bunch of new micro-memoirs, but I wasn't getting a lot written. It occurred to me that I should try to get the big-picture view of my various projects. I thought, I just need to see what I have written in these various modes. I printed everything out, and realized I was halfway done with four different books, a very poor model of efficiency. I felt a little depressed about it, four huge stacks of paper, when a sane person would have just finished one book.
 
And then, looking at the four piles, I realized that two piles actually were in conversation: these little micro-memoirs and these longer meditative ones want to talk to each other. It's still me and my voice. It's just two different ways of approaching my own background. I liked the idea of memoirs and micro memoirs mashed up together, showing different ways of accessing truth.
 
When I had that idea, I organized the manuscript into alternating sections. I wasn't sure if it would be too abrupt for readers to be reading shorties and then come to something long. But I sent it out to a couple of friends, and they all surprised me by uniformly saying it seemed to work. By the time they got to the longer piece, they were ready to slow down. And they liked the feeling of returning, zipping back through the quicker pieces.
 
NSP: It absolutely works!
 
In several of the micro-memoirs in The Irish Goodbye, I noticed the theme of “recognition”—recognizing or not recognizing places; recognizing oneself in a nude portrait, returning to memories and places, but not recognizing them; not recognizing oneself in others’ stories about the past.
 
BAF: Thanks, Nicole. I love that you trace this theme of recognition throughout the book. I think vulnerability, in a weird way, leads to recognition, because by being vulnerable, we're conscious of not shrouding ourselves, not masquerading as another, not airbrushing and photoshopping.
 
NSP: I read an interview in which you advocated for the micro memoir and its ability to stand alone—the power of these small stories to work independent of a larger “whole.” I'm also interested in your perspective on the power of the collection or collective—what happens when a series of micro-memoirs is arranged in a way that allows them to riff off of each other and accumulate meaning?
 
BAF: Yes, for sure. It was and is important to me that each piece stand alone. I know a lot of writers who are doing fascinating things with fragments, for example, Maggie Nelson and Claudia Rankine. I love their books, but I wasn't interested in working with fragments. I wanted each piece to have its own arc and closure--even very small pieces, as short as a sentence.
 
That being said, I really like the idea that someone who is reading The Irish Goodbye will recognize the same people from Heating and Cooling and have deeper insight into this long marriage or see the children grow up, or recognize themes that have come in early and are deepening. As the reader progresses, they can have that novelistic sense of a bigger picture connecting.
 
I've always liked how, for example, a fiction writer like Jennifer Egan can mention a minor character in a story and then later, in another story, that minor character becomes the main point-of-view character. That connection gives you a sense of history, almost the frisson of getting in on this inside joke.
 
So I like that each micro-memoir stands alone, but I enjoy thinking that people who have read other books of mine might get to experience the pleasure of the big picture, like stepping back to see the entirety of a Chuck Close painting.
 
NSP: That was one of the first things I experienced when reading The Irish Goodbye!  I opened it and saw that the book leads with a piece called “Married Love,” which connected to the series of  “Married Love” pieces in Heating and Cooling. From the very first piece, I felt this kinship with the book, like I was visiting an old friend in a new place. I recognized these characters, which led to that frisson you mentioned.
 
Again, your response makes me think of the theme of recognition. You put the reader in a position to feel that sense of recognition of characters, events, and voice, humor, and memory. We return to those events, like the narrator returns to those events to reexamine them or reframe them.
 
BAF: I love that. I love what you said: the reader ends up being in on the recognizing.
 
NSP: One of the pieces in this collection that I keep thinking about is called, “Because My Editor Suggests I reveal How My Sister Died.” You write this using a direct reader address,
 
“I write, Reader, I’m not trying to be coy. Which is true.” 
 
BAF: I never, ever thought I could write about the night of my sister's death. I simply didn’t talk about it. Even people who have known me for a long time and know that my sister is dead and know it was a sudden death didn't really know what had happened. I just didn't want to talk about it, and also felt like I couldn't because that explanation is inadequate. It’s just such a complicated and ugly and sad, sad story.
 
My editor, Jill Bialosky at Norton, is a great reader and smart editor. She had accepted the book, but she said, I think you need to tell the reader how your sister died.
 
And I hated that she said this because I knew she was right.
 
I had another piece in the book about this very strange moment when I had to Google myself. I found the “related searches,” which is the term for the box that comes up with things that people Googled about you, included all the things I expected: Beth Ann Fennelly poems and Beth Ann Fennelly, micro-memoirs, and so on. And then one related search said, “Beth Ann Fennelly sister.”
 
I realized that people were Googling that to try to learn how my sister died. It shocked me, but why would I blame them? I would also want to know if I had read about someone grieving a sister who died before she was 40. I might do the same thing and Google it. It's not prurient. It's curious.
 
Yet I still resisted, and in fact, resented having to go there. I think that was the mood that brought me to that piece. What I finally did is I just started writing really fast, addressing the reader, almost confrontationally, and I started quoting from the autopsy, which is the worst possible thing I could imagine doing. It was the most direct way to answer the question, how did your sister die? But it also kind of allowed me to talk about the inadequacy of that answer.
 
NSP: Wow. Yes. I’d noticed the omission in Heating and Cooling and in the first 86 pages of The Irish Goodbye. The placement of this piece and the piece itself showed the agony of and resistance to explaining. This makes me wonder about what you see as the affordances and limitations of the micro-memoir form. When and why do you find yourself exploring subjects in short form vs. long?
 
BAF: I'm still fascinated by what can be accomplished in this small space, and getting someplace as quickly as I can, sometimes by cutting backstory and cutting some of the reflective work I normally associate with a longer, more meditative essay.
 
Of course, the micro-memoir form requires the right-sized idea, which sometimes meant leaving out or not writing about certain experiences that require more real estate.
 
When I alternated the short pieces the long pieces in this book, I felt like I was satisfying two different cravings.
 
NSP: I’m interested in knowing more about the influence of geography on writing your writing. How does writing from Mississippi influence your work and identity as a nonfiction writer? Does geography influence your writing and courage to speak up?
 
BAF: I think a lot about what it means to be a Southern writer, and I think a lot about how geography influences psychology.
 
I live in Oxford, Mississippi. Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation, and the things most people know about Mississippi are the very negative things: highest teenage pregnancy rate, highest illiteracy rate, second highest incarceration rate. (Thank you, Texas.) Really, the lowest of the low in many, many areas.
 
But also? Highest number of Pulitzer-Prize winning authors. When I look at our literary output, we have been out punching our weight the whole time. In some ways, Mississippi reminds me of Irish culture. My family is Irish on both sides. Ireland is this contentious nation with these deep scars that has consistently produced some of the world's best literature, like Mississippi.
 
I live about a mile from Faulkner's house. We have Jesmyn Ward, Natasha Trethewey, Kiese Laymon. We are blessed with examples of people who have written in my town, who have come to the university.
 
I'm an inheritor of this landscape. I moved here in 2001. I'm originally from Chicago, so I'm conscious of being a transplant, but maybe that's weirdly made me more conscious of the Southern inheritance. I never took it for granted.
 
Of course, if you're working in the South, where politeness and bless-your-heart manners are at the forefront of things, well that does, of course, conflict with this very thing we've been talking about—the need to be vulnerable and investigate even the uglier moments of our psyches. That does provide a bit of tension and conflict. I guess I would say, ultimately, it hasn't stopped me.
 
NSP: That feels like the perfect place to end! Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today!
 
BAF: Thank you! I hope we get a chance to visit again in person again soon.
Nicole S. Piasecki is a Denver-based creative nonfiction writer, educator, and editor. She serves as an assistant professor for the English Department at the University of Colorado Denver. She also works as a consulting editor for nonfiction at Copper Nickel. Her creative and scholarly work has been featured at This American Life, Mom Egg Review, Longreads, Hippocampus Magazine, Literary Mama, Gertrude Press, the Brevity blog, and the Colorado Review blog. Nicole earned an MFA in creative writing at Colorado State University. She is currently working on a book of essays about queer liminal spaces and the rural-ish Midwest

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