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“There is so much we do to prove who we are”
Appreciating the posthumous writing of Elizabeth Crowell
I was on my way to the middle school open house, in that twilight zone of decompressing from work, not expecting anything else from my day just wanting to disconnect from reality for a moment. Mark was driving, kids were in the back and I had my phone open, cycling through my usuals: Slack, Medium, Bluesky, email, when I saw that Bellevue Review had sent me a newsletter. I don’t usually open random newsletters (no offense to Bellevue Review), but for whatever reason this time I did and—what I didn’t know I needed— that’s where I discovered .
Elizabeth was included in Bellevue’s newsletter in memorium. She had died recently, at 60, of a weird cancer she wrote about openly. She won two big essay contests and they were celebrating her work. Ashamed to admit it, I initially clicked the links to her essays the way a person cranes their neck at a car crash. What did it mean? Was she any good, as a writer, and did that make it all worth it?
An aside: Who is it that sings about not celebrating posthumous work, you have to appreciate it while the artist is alive? (It is J. Cole / Lil Durk. This is on my running playlist, and sometimes it cycles through my brain.)
If you ain’t never posted a rapper when he was alive
You can’t post about him after he get hit
