Brooklyn Barton, Dixie State University
In this non-fiction essay, I chronicle a rite of passage I went through in high school following the death of a close friend. A teacher encouraged me to write about my grief and pass it on to my friend's mother, a teacher at my high school in rural Utah. The essay, composed for an advanced writing course, bears the influence of Adichie, Sherman Alexie, and Virginia Woolf, utilizing elements drawn from fiction technique I have studied in other writing classes, e.g. symbol, dialogue, characterization.