Jo Ann Beard writes in a unique way, which is simple yet extraordinary. JoAnn Beard is a creative non-fiction writer and novelist. She used personal narration to write her essays, which are a memoir or based on a true event, and she expressed them through the first-person point of view, which brings to light symbolism, nostalgia, and imagery. JoAnn Beard was a graduate of the University of Iowa with a BFA and with a Masters in writing creative nonfiction. While going to the University of Iowa, she was a friend with the victims of a shooting at the university, which became one of her motivation to write essays like “The Fourth States of Matter”.
The "Fourth State of Matter” is by far one of her most famous writing. In the essay, she talked about her “vanished husband,” and his old belongings which symbolized the people that died during the shooting. In the essay, she was still having a hard time
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In "Maybe It Happened," she was very descriptive about when she played house with her older cousins. "It's possible that the 9-year-old wore a fashion-conscious sherbet-orange skirt and a ruffled midriff top, making her seem even more sophisticated than her actual years and possible that the other one wore a sleeveless white blouse, gray pleated shorts, and glasses with light blue frames, making her seem like a 7-year-old teacher." This helped readers get a distinct image of her childhood game. As for the "Longest Night...," she mostly uses imagery to describe the actions of her dog, as it was their last moment, "she used to sleep at the foot of the bed, and at first light, first twitch, would crawl sleepily up to my pillow...," instead of creating imagery pictures like in "Maybe It happened." For the "Fourth State of Matter," she constantly brought up "blackboard," or "chalkboard," to show that the story took place back when universities or any schools used to use a chalkboard, instead of