Cover Essays

2021's Advent Calendar featured Cover essays. We all know what a cover song is, but a cover essay is a rarer thing. So let's write and publish some. Writers  identify an essay they love or have always wondered how it worked, and write their own version of that essay. Writers should take the original essay's topic or stance or persona or formal conceit or structure or peculiar device or some other identifying aspect of the essay and use that to write their own essay. 

We liked the idea so much we decided to make this a regular (if occasional) feature, so expect more cover essays on Essay Daily. We'll collect them here.

Want to write one? Drop us a line with your proposal.

(Related, check out the 2022 March Faxness Tournament, which will be focusing on cover songs.)

Essays in our Cover Series:

• Andrea Flint, The Wisdom of Spear Grass (a Sarah Minor cover)
• Cheryl Graham, I ♥ the 80s
• Sean Lovelace, Sean Lovelace's Classic Essay, "Total T-Rex"
• Paul Crenshaw covering Steve Edwards
• Dec 1, 2021: Heidi Czerwiec covering Lia Purpura, Jamaica Kincaid, Wallace Strevens, Tim O'Brien, Shakespeare, Brian Doyle, and John Scalzi
• Dec 2, 2021: Joe Bonomo covering Stuart Dybek's "Confession"
• Dec 3, 2021: Mieke de Vriese covering Naima Coster's "Subjunctive"
• Dec 4, 2021: Jodie Noel Vinson covering Gay Talese's "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold"
• Dec 5, 2021: Jamie Etheridge covering Joan Didion's "In Bed"
• Dec 6, 2021: Eric Aldrich covering Roland Barthes' "The Brain of Einstein"
• Dec 7, 2021: Justin St. Germain covering Walter Benjamin's "Hashish in Marseille"
• Dec 8, 2021; Scott Russell Morris covering Virginia Woolf's "Street Haunting"
• Dec 9, 2021: Brooke Champagne covering Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts"
• Dec 10, 2021: Megan Baxter covering Ted Kooser's "Small Rooms in Time"
• Dec 11, 2021: Mo Daviau covering Jacqui Shine's "In the Trance Room"
• Dec 12, 2021: Sarah Minor covering Brian Doyle's "The Greatest Nature Essay Ever"
• Dec 13, 2021: Chris Daley covering Sei Shōnagon's "The Pillow Book"
• Dec 14, 2021: Marcia Aldrich covering Sarah Einstein's "Self-Portrait in Apologies"
• Dec 15, 2021: Darcy Jay Gagnon covering Lawrence Weschler’s "Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder"
• Dec 16, 2021: Thomas Mira y Lopez covering José J. Veiga's "Professor Pulquério" & Alejandro Zambra's "Multiple Choice""
• Dec 17, 2021: Sara Campbell covering Joan Didion's "In Bed"
• Dec 18, 2021: Lawrence Lenhart covering DFW's "Consider the Lobster" and MK Fisher's "Love and Death Among the Molluscs"
• Dec 19, 2021: Scott Dickensheets covering David Gates's "Log Man"
• Dec 20, 2021: Marcia Aldrich covering Sei Shônagon’s The Pillow Book
• Dec 21, 2021: Patrick Madden covering Louise Imogen Guiney's "On a Pleasing Encounter with a Pickpocket"
• Dec 22, 2021: Ander Monson covering Matias Viegener's 2500 Random Things About Me Too
• Dec 23, 2021: Will Slattery covering Anne Carson's "Merry Christmas from Hegel"
• Dec 24, 2021: David Griffith covering Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five
• Dec 25, 2021: Jenny Spinner covering Woolf's "The Death of the Moth"
  
  and 2021's calendar also included a Christmas Octave:
  
  
• Dec 26, Spencer Wilkins covering Jericho Parms's "On Puddling"
• Dec 27, Hannah Bonner covering Ariana Reines
• Dec 28, Rebecca Flowers covering Woolf's "The Death of the Moth"
• Dec 29, Sarah Khatry covering Brandon Shimoda's "Domanju"
• Dec 30, Aaron Pang covering Roland Barthes's "Plastic"
• Dec 31, Logan Naylor covering Mary Ruefle's "My Private Property"
• Jan 1, 2022: Martha Strawbridge covering Daisy Pitkin's "An Algorithm"