memoir

Interview with Elizabeth Rosner and Survivor Cafe giveaway

Saturday, September 29, 2018
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I’m so, so happy to feature poet, novelist and now, non-fiction author Elizabeth Rosner on the blog this week! Elizabeth and I are literary agency AND publisher sisters – both represented by the wonderful DeFiore & Company in New York, publishing our books with the incredible Counterpoint Press located in Berkeley, CA. Elizabeth is the author of five, count-em five, books — and most recently her first non-fiction/memoir Survivor Café: The Legacy of…

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Interview with Rebecca Fish Ewan and GIVEAWAY

Saturday, July 28, 2018
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I’m so excited to introduce everyone to Rebecca Fish Ewan, author of By the Forces of Gravity. I met Rebecca last year at Hippocamp, Hippocampus Magazine’s annual Creative Nonfiction conference. She approached me after my breakout session on Experimental Writing and talked about her work, which combined drawings and free verse. It was exactly the type of thing I wanted to add to my presentation, so I was extremely grateful! She even…

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Lara’s Remarkable Memoir

Wednesday, April 4, 2018
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  Yesterday was the release day for Lara’s memoir. Over the past half-year, I’ve grown to adore both Lara and her writing as I’ve gotten to know her as a colleague on the Debutante Ball. I’ve read many a memoir before so I knew to expect a lot of personal information, but this is the first time I’ve read one written by someone I know. And man, was I surprised….

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Dealing with Toxicity: Tough Relationships in Lara Lillibridge’s GIRLISH: GROWING UP IN A LESBIAN HOME

Monday, April 2, 2018
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You do not owe toxic people a place in your life. Whoever they are, whatever they tell you, whatever strings they think they can tug on, you don’t owe them. This is something I thought about a lot while reading Girlish. Lara’s life looks nothing like mine, but a lot of the feelings resonate. I know what it’s like to be gaslit. I know how confusing, disorienting, and infuriating that…

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The Edit Letter and Other Obsessions

Tuesday, February 27, 2018
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I spent months dreading my edit letter. One thing I excel at in particular is imagining the worst possible outcome in any situation, and then obsessing over it at two in the morning.  You may think two o’clock is an inconvenient time to obsess over edit letters and other things, but I’m here to tell you that is a very fine time indeed. First of all, no one else is…

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Interview with Rae Theodore + Giveaway for LEAVING NORMAL: ADVENTURES IN GENDER

Saturday, February 24, 2018
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Rae Theodore and I both attended HippoCamp17, Hippocampus Magazine’s annual Creative Nonfiction Conference, where Rae led a session called Finding Your Tribe, or How a Writing Group Saved My Life.  I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Rae in the months after the conference. Leaving Normal: Adventures in Gender is a beautifully wrought memoir, and I’m excited to have Rae on the Ball this week. She is truly a gifted writer and…

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My Support System Has a Few Unexpected Characters…

Tuesday, February 20, 2018
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My support system is made up of people from several different categories. Other Writers: As a memoirist, my writing process has involved a lot of painful revisiting of unhappy memories combined with absolute terror over people actually reading it. Luckily, there is a wonderful Facebook Binders group of women memoirists that is filled with other women on the same journey.  There is always someone around to vent to, or to…

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Interview w/ Shannon Leone Fowler + Giveaway for TRAVELING WITH GHOSTS

Saturday, February 3, 2018
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I am excited to introduce our readers to one of my favorite memoirs of 2017, TRAVELING WITH GHOSTS: A MEMOIR OF LOVE AND LOSS.  It’s a heartbreakingly beautiful memoir, and Shannon Leone Fowler, whom I met in a Facebook binders group, is a strong and resilient woman who always has encouraging words for emerging writers.   About TRAVELING WITH GHOSTS: In 2002, Shannon Leone Fowler was a blissful twenty-eight-year-old marine…

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Critique Partners and Beta Readers—Some Stranger Than Others

Tuesday, January 16, 2018
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  I have had several kinds of critique partners on Girlish. I didn’t have a writing group that met once a week and read each other’s works in progress, but I did have several key people, all located in different parts of the country, who read my work and helped me whip it into shape. Some of the chapters were written during my MFA at West Virginia Wesleyan College, where…

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Writing Through Distractions of the Small Child Variety

Tuesday, January 9, 2018
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My emergence as a writer and a mother occurred nearly simultaneously—I was suddenly flooded with stories when I was pregnant with my second child, and my oldest was two years old. Writing for me has always involved coping with distractions of the small child variety.  Yet, I earned two college degrees and wrote over one thousand pages while mothering two small creatures over nearly a decade, and I like to…

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