Acknowledgements: little markers and echoes and ghosts of love
When perusing a library or bookstore, I’ll flip to the front or back of a book to read the acknowledgements section. For the writer, it is a chance to recognize and thank people who gave their support, whether physically or emotionally. Though an individual sits before the blank page or computer screen and works with words, there are other voices from people, both dead and alive, who influence, challenge, critique, and inspire one’s work. The acknowledgements section is a chance to pull back the veil and show readers that no book is written in a vacuum.
I’m avoiding referring to the “acknowledgements page.” I lament that many editors and publishing houses insist on a single page, even limiting the number of acknowledgements to ten. I love it when an author cuts loose over several pages. Sometimes, I recognize the names of writers I admire, but I also delight in the author’s personal acquaintances, including the nicknames; these shout-outs feel like an inside joke, a high-five, or a hug.
Like any form of writing, an acknowledgements section can get formulaic and, yawn, boring. The best acknowledgements nudge me to reach out to people for whom I’m thankful, whether I’m writing a book or not. So, thanks to Ginny, my boo, for all things, including how you have my back; thanks to my buddy Walter, who always writes “in wordy wordiness” at the close of his weekly Substack; and thanks to a poet in New York named Devin Kelly, who recently wrote that a dog-eared page and faint pencil mark in a library book are “little markers and echoes and ghosts of my love.” His phrase prompted this musing about acknowledgements.
And let me give a shout-out to Chapelboro’s own, Victor Lewis, who posts these weekly little big moments and always makes the effort to include a cool graphic. Go check out the photo for my piece about mullets.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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