brittany borghi
international writer, educator, consultant
about
Brittany Borghi is a creative writer and Fulbright fellow whose work examines shame and honesty as filtered through sex, family, and the land. Her essays have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Hopkins Review, Guesthouse, Entropy, Pittsburgh City Paper, and have been published by the UNESCO Cities of Literature program. Her work has been included in The Best American Essays and nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology.
She is currently working to publish her first book, THROUGH ME FIRST, a work of autofiction about uncovering a slew of family secrets--affairs, abuse, and her mother's real-life lover named Dick--and what it means to come to grips with the kind of love you come from. A work of millennial nostalgia, THROUGH ME FIRST takes place in the constantly shifting/erupting landscape of post-industrial western Pennsylvania in the '60s, '90s, and today.
Brittany is the recipient of a creative writing Fulbright fellowship, which took her to southern Italy to live in her family's ancestral village in Calabria from 2022--2024, where she conducted embedded research about the lives of people who are fighting to reclaim their land, traditions, and communities in the face of organized abandonment and our increasing hostile climate. During this time, she was also a visiting research at the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna. This project, tentatively titled BUILD YOUR CHILDREN A HOME IN WHICH TO LIVE, is the basis of her second book project and other interdisciplinary off-shoots.
Brittany holds an MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She taught as a full-time faculty member in the Department of Rhetoric at Iowa for four years, where she won awards for her teaching and helped create The Perch, a reading room in the university's main library and an accompanying set of curriculum designed to teach information and media literacy.
Brittany is based in Pittsburgh, PA, and travels frequently to Italy. She speaks Italian and is happy to collaborate on international projects, as well.
writing
"A Delicate Strength," The Iowa Review
"When Partners Disappear Together," The Hopkins Review
"And If One Should Never Hear the Wave?" Guesthouse
"Reckoning with Class," Pittsburgh City Paper
"Mother's Memoir Inspires New Book from Abraham Verghese," Iowa Magazine
"Dinner Party Sets the Table for Chang's New Novel," Iowa Magazine
"Iowa Archaeologist Digs for Meaning," Iowa Magazine
"What's So Funny?" UNESCO Cities of Literature
work with me
consulting and development
I offer bespoke consulting and development services for writers who are looking for help with short-and-long-form projects. From holistic, one-on-one coaching sessions to sharpening your prose with line edits, I have helped dozens of clients and students with:
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Developing and fine-tuning ideas for book projects,
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Revising full-length creative manuscripts,
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Analyzing and evaluating the progression of their characters and plot points over the course of their manuscript,
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Turning blog posts into works of literature,
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Working with family trauma to tell a story,
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Shoring up self-esteem and endurance during the agent querying process,
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Brainstorming, writing, and editing personal essays for scholarships, college applications, and submission to literary magazines and contests,
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And polishing prose at the sentence level.
If you are considering writing a book and you don't know where to start, let's chat and figure out where you are--and where you can go from here.
If you're writing a book, and you need help staying on track, establishing and meeting literary and personal goals for your work--drop me a note. I'll get you headed in the right direction.
If you have a completed manuscript (or an almost-completed manuscript) and you need a beta reader or another set of eyes--reach out. I'd love to read your work.
When you work with me, you'll be collaborating with a graduate from the country's best creative writing program, a recipient of one of the most prestigious international fellowships in the U.S., and a caring teacher and published author who knows how to it feels to be right where you are.
Contact me when you're ready, and let's get your project done together.
Together, we'll:
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Establish your writing goals
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Create a plan for how you'll reach those goals
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Have in-depth conversations about my feedback on your work, which is tailored specifically to your ambitions
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Build prompts, mini assignments, and breaks to get you through tough spots
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Evaluate your work: is it meeting the goals you want to reach? If not, we'll reevaluate, reposition, and move you toward the finish line.
seo blogging and freelance pr writing
If your company or organization needs a reliable writer with SEO blogging skills and a catalog of PR magazine bylines, I'd love to talk with you about how I can help to develop content that will drive new clients to your site.
Reach out today and let's talk about how we can collaborate.
contact
If you're curious to know more about my writing and book projects or if you'd like to talk about my consulting and blogging services, I'd love to hear from you. You can use the form below to tell me more about yourself. You can also email me at brittany.borghi@gmail.com.