“Lost in the Typhoon” by Wendy Cheng, a creative nonfiction essay published in Brink Issue No. 4, was one of twelve essays nominated for the University of Iowa Krause Essay Prize, which “is awarded each year to the work that best exemplifies the art of essaying. As a celebration of inquiry, experimentation, discovery, and change, the Prize seeks to honor work that emphasizes the activity of a text, rather than that text’s status as a dispensary of information.” Nominations for the Krause Essay Prize are made each year by a committee of writers, filmmakers, radio producers, visual artists, editors, and readers. The nominated essays then become texts in a graduate writing seminar offered by The Nonfiction Writing Program each spring, in which graduate students ultimately select the winning work. What an honor!
“Lost in the Typhoon” recreates and reimagines a young woman’s harrowing experience hiking one of the tallest mountains in Taiwan with friends when a typhoon hits, from the perspective of her daughter several decades later.
Wendy Cheng 