Here’s the 197th installment, featuring Rachel Weaver, author most recently of Dizzy: A Memoir. - Sari Botton

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Rachel Weaver’s novel Point of Direction was named a Top Ten Book To Pick Up Now by Oprah Magazine. She teaches at Wilkes University and Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Rachel’s migraine memoir, Dizzy, an “arresting new memoir” according to Maureen Corrigan on NPR’s Fresh Air, is newly out with West Virginia University Press. Her novel The Last Run, is forthcoming in June 2026 with Lake Union Publishing. Prior to earning her MFA in Writing and Poetics at Naropa University, Rachel worked for the Forest Service in Alaska studying bears, raptors and songbirds. She holds a CPA in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. For more information visit RachelWeaver.net

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I’m 51. I’ve been writing for a little over 20 years.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

Dizzy: A Memoir, published Feb 10, 2026

What number book is this for you?

Second book, first memoir.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

It’s a braided memoir that follows my time working in the backcountry of Alaska for the Forest Service and my time navigating the medical system as a chronically ill patient with a mysterious illness.

Dizzy started off as an essay published by The Sun Magazine. It was the first time I’d written about my illness and I was blown away by how many people contacted me wanting to talk about how similar their journey was.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

“In her early 30s, Rachel Weaver woke up dizzy and unable to function—a condition that persisted daily for eighteen years. Rachel stumped over forty medical practitioners, faced hostility and indifference, was accused of making it all up, went broke, wondered if she really was making it all up, and was subjected to endless drugs and invasive procedures in her search to learn the truth about her body. A medical mystery and a cautionary tale about our broken-down system, DIZZY is a story about perseverance in pursuit of answers, of learning to live with life’s uncertainty, and the struggle to find joy in an imperfect but beautiful world.”

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

In my 20s I was living in a small Alaskan town. I had three or four months off of work in the winter when the weather closed in and our field sites became inaccessible. Most everything in town closed up for the winter except for the bar and the library and it got dark around 2 or 3pm. After a winter of spending WAY too much time in the bar, I decided I needed a hobby. I’d always been a huge reader so I thought, I’ll write a book, how hard can it be? I said to my friend Diane one afternoon at the bar, “I don’t know what’s wrong with all these people that it takes them ten years to write a book, I’m going to be done in three months.” I was pretty convinced I’d written the worlds most fantastic novel that winter.

We went back to work in the spring and worked long hours during the field season, so I didn’t look at it again until the next winter when I discovered I’d actually written the world’s worst novel. But I was hooked by the puzzle of it. How did people write the novels that had affected me so deeply in my life? What were they doing on the page that made that happen? I started interlibrary loaning books from Anchorage that would take forever to get to where I lived and taught myself to read as a writer to try to decipher the magic.

DIZZY started off as an essay published by The Sun Magazine. It was the first time I’d written about my illness and I was blown away by how many people contacted me wanting to talk about how similar their journey was. It made me start to think that if I wrote the book I might reach someone struggling in the way I did with chronic illness and the book might make them feel less alone. That seemed worth it to me. The process of going back into all those hard years was fraught, though. I didn’t really know if I had it in me to finish the book until I did.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

The hardest part was forcing myself to relive it. It was brutal when it was happening and it was brutal to go back through it to get it on the page.

Publishing took a while. My agent, Andrea Somberg, never gave up. She’s fantastic. The book made it to several editorial meetings before West Virginia Press picked it up. The feedback was often that they wanted it to be more reported, they wanted facts and figures added in. But I knew from the beginning that I wanted to write a memoir using all the techniques of fiction (except for the making it up part). I wanted to pull the reader deeply into the experience such that they felt what it means to be lost in the medical system, lost in your own malfunctioning body, adrift for so many years in the middle of what’s supposed to be your life.

“In her early 30s, Rachel Weaver woke up dizzy and unable to function—a condition that persisted daily for eighteen years. Rachel stumped over forty medical practitioners, faced hostility and indifference, was accused of making it all up, went broke, wondered if she really was making it all up, and was subjected to endless drugs and invasive procedures in her search to learn the truth about her body.”

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

I used real names for the most part. I asked every single person to read every section they appeared in. My brain wasn’t working great for the 18 years I was writing about, so it was important to me to check what I remembered against what the other person who was there remembered. It was helpful.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

I read a ton of illness narratives as I worked on this book. So many influenced me! If I had to pick a few I’d say Tom Andrew’s book Codeine Diary, all of Arthur Frank’s books but especially The Wounded Storyteller, and How To Be Sick by Toni Bernhard.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

I’m not sure. I’m only on day three of the book being out in the world. I feel a bit exposed, and hopeful that it will reach someone who needs it. Chronic illness is such a lonely road. I suffered as much from that as I did from the physical symptoms. I think my advice would be if you write with clear intention of using your story to shine a light on the wider, collective experience, you’ll be able to weather the rest of the process.

What do you love about writing?

I love that it makes me pay attention to the world so closely, I love that it forces me to think through what’s true and what’s not, I love that it gives me somewhere else to go in my mind. I love that it demands I find a quiet contemplative place inside myself to write from.

What frustrates you about writing?

That I don’t have more time for it. I have three jobs, two kids, two dogs, and one husband. Busy around here.

What about writing surprises you?

Other books I read. I’m always devouring books. I’ve always relied on storytelling to help me make sense of people and the world.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

Nope. I write around everything else. When my boys were little I used to go to Laramie, Wyoming for a weekend. It’s three hours from my house so far enough away that I’m not going to drive home unless something big is wrong. Also, there’s not much to do in Laramie except go to the Subway, so no distractions. And hotels are cheap because who goes to Laramie for a weekend. I would pack all my food and hide out for a couple days and write.

I got more done this way than I ever could writing in small thirty minute sessions within a day full of other responsibilities. It was easier and more productive to have long stretches of time, even if they were months apart, to drop fully into the world of the book and to stay there.

I asked every single person to read every section they appeared in. My brain wasn’t working great for the 18 years I was writing about, so it was important to me to check what I remembered against what the other person who was there remembered. It was helpful.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I play in four ice hockey leagues. It clears my head.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I have a novel coming out this year in addition to DIZZY. It’s called THE LAST RUN and will be out with Lake Union Press on June 9, 2026. I’ve got another novel in the works as well. I’m about 100 pages in, realizing pretty much all of it needs to be rewritten, but it’s fun and I can’t wait to get back to it.

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Here’s the 196th installment, groundbreaking television journalist Carol Lin, author of WHEN NEWS BREAKS, A Memoir of Love and War. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Carol Lin made history as the first national television journalist to break the news of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. During her more than twenty years in broadcast journalism, mostly at ABC News and CNN, Carol Lin received a national Emmy, a Peabody, the Alfred I. DuPont Award, and Greater Los Angeles Press Club Awards for Excellence in both Investigative Reporting and her coverage of the Los Angeles Riots. She is the author of WHEN NEWS BREAKS, A Memoir of Love and War (Third Rail Press). Kirkus praises the memoir as emotionally resonant, personal and touching while BookLife|PublishersWeekly points to Lin’s keen eye for detail and the romance she shared with a fellow journalist as the memoir’s beating heart in an unflinching portrayal of grief.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I am 65 and gauge this as middle aged since my maternal grandmother lived to 103! I have reported in broadcast and print journalism, and speechwriting for thirty years. The last two years were spent writing my memoir. I am currently working on a novel.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

WHEN NEWS BREAKS, A Memoir of Love and War published on December 9, 2025.

The book begins in the weeks after 9/11 along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan where my photographer and I are in the crosshairs of a Taliban sniper, a stark reminder of what it’s like to survive in the gaze and judgment of others. It is a metaphor for what it’s like to succeed in a white-centric, male-dominated journalism career.

What number book is this for you?

Book number one.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

WHEN NEWS BREAKS is memoir with the personality of creative non-fiction. I wrote with the same urgency for my readers as I did for my ABC News and CNN viewers, to feel what I felt and bear witness to a complicated career and marriage.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

When News Breaks is a love story, and the making and breaking of a news career that introduced me to an older news man and the events that almost tore us apart. The book begins in the weeks after 9/11 along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan where my photographer and I are in the crosshairs of a Taliban sniper, a stark reminder of what it’s like to survive in the gaze and judgment of others. It is a metaphor for what it’s like to succeed in a white-centric, male-dominated journalism career.

However, breaking news is the adrenaline rush—and a love that my Chinese mother warned would never love me back. When devastating news breaks for my own family, I am forced to question a career that demands everything, a marriage marked by infidelity and cancer, and the sacrifices required to become the mother my daughter needs me to be.

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

I started the first chapters shortly after leaving CNN but set them aside until fifteen years later when I saw how my 21-year-old daughter was facing the same hard choices I had once faced, the choices that sent me down an irreversible life path. I realized she needed to know the whole story about how she came to be, the mistakes her parents made, and the price we paid.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

The hardest aspect of writing was being exquisitely honest about the painful ways my husband and I loved each other and writing our story with details that gave readers reasons to still root for us.

The most difficult aspect of getting published was not the querying of agents and publishers. That’s a pretty straightforward process. What is opaque is how quickly new books have to perform in a crowded marketplace. A new book has to pre-sell and earn early reviews with a startling amount of volume and velocity to be noticed in rankings and qualify for book lists. Creating this type of buzz is challenging for most indie authors and small press.

I started the first chapters shortly after leaving CNN but set them aside until fifteen years later when I saw how my 21-year-old daughter was facing the same hard choices I had once faced, the choices that sent me down an irreversible life path. I realized she needed to know the whole story about how she came to be, the mistakes her parents made, and the price we paid.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

Because my husband was such a beloved person, I knew our private pain was going to be a shock to family and friends. That’s the deal with the Devil in writing memoir. If I was going to do this, I had to write my truth, as accurately as I could, as respectfully as my family deserved, yet be unsparingly candid for the readers who expect nothing less.

My daughter’s opinion mattered most. When she read the final manuscript, she cried, and for two hours, asked questions. Then, she gave me notes and suggested edits, as perhaps the daughter of two journalists would do! It turns out I gave birth to my most important beta reader!

I did run passages by individuals mentioned in the book to check my recollection against their memories. In some cases, I shared the entire manuscript but was strategic about timing. For example, with a CNN executive producer who is my best friend, I shared the manuscript only after the narrative was locked down because I knew she’d want to tell me how to write the entire book, which is exactly what she tried to do! No one else asked for changes. Some offered more detail for accuracy. I changed some names for privacy reasons.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi inspired more empathy for cancer doctors who tried to save my husband’s life. Wild by Cheryl Strayed was outstanding for the craft of weaving backstory. Did I Ever Tell You by Genevieve Kingston was a masterpiece in story structure and drawing out the character of her mom. Specific scenes in Blue Hour Homecoming by Alle Mudrick were wrenching and yet readable because she writes with such visceral clarity. I still pull the book off my shelf to study how she built out specific scenes that, in lesser hands, would be too graphic for my taste. Point of disclosure, Alle Mudrick also happens to be my publisher at Third Rail Press.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

The best advice I got is you can’t revise what isn’t written. Just write. The chapter sequence or word choice doesn’t matter at first draft. Don’t think about craft or follow rules or formulas in your first draft. All the beautiful sculpting and magic will happen in revision.

What do you love about writing?

The utter immersive creativity and humility of having an idea and making it come to life!

What frustrates you about writing?

There is a point where the book decides what it wants to be. I thought my memoir would explore themes related to predestination and why bad things happen to good people. But no! The memories my brain surfaced had more to do with unresolved questions and conflicts about why I loved who I loved, and letting go of people and plans that once defined me.

What about writing surprises you?

How much I love it. It’s like a bad boyfriend who loves me, occupies all my time and spends my money.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

A lot of coffee. Immediately after I wake up.

Because my husband was such a beloved person, I knew our private pain was going to be a shock to family and friends. That’s the deal with the Devil in writing memoir. If I was going to do this, I had to write my truth, as accurately as I could, as respectfully as my family deserved, yet be unsparingly candid for the readers who expect nothing less.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

Travel is my jam. Because I live in Hawaii, the long flights to any destination are perfect for writing. The immersive nature of writing makes the flight time feel short. Then, I’m in a new place with new people, cultures, colors, foods, sounds, smells, and sensations which are all fodder for the next story.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I am working on a fiction based on the true story of a Los Angeles County deputy involved shooting. While I have firsthand knowledge of the unprecedented decisions made in that case, I’m more intrigued by writing characters who test our assumptions of what is truth and what is the price paid in the pursuit of justice.

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Readers,

During my eight years as the editorial director of a wonderful storytelling non-profit called TMI Project, I often had to come up with writing prompts for workshops I led. I had a knack for consistently coming up with a varied assortment that jogged people’s brains, eliciting productive writing (something I’d first developed as a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter of memoirs), and leading the executive director to nickname me “The Prompt-O-Matic.” I thought I’d repurpose that knack over here, in The Lit Lab, offering weekly prompts for paid subscribers. This is the 114th installment.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Your mind can latch onto a prompt very literally, or lead you toward something altogether different from the suggestion at hand. I’ve also found there are some writers for whom, no matter how they’re prompted, the same story emerges—a story that stubbornly won’t go away until it gets dumped onto the page. Sometimes it’s the story you need to write; other times, it’s the story you need to get out of your way before anything else can come through. Either way, being prompted helps move the writer forward.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Writing prompts can also help dissolve writers’ block, especially when you respond to them while racing against a timer. I know from experience; when I started at TMI Project, I myself had been blocked for some time. To encourage workshop participants, I figured I’d “take the workshop with them,” doing twenty-minute free-writes alongside them, using my own prompts. It instantly unblocked me, freeing me to write story after story.

Below the paywall is the 114th prompt in this series. Use it however you’d like to spark new writing, ***but please don’t share it with anyone else. I hope to someday publish a book of these. And I use them in my teaching.

My writing prompts are offered as a perk for those who pay to support my work. Thank you for your support! 🙏

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I invite those taking part in this to leave, in the comments, up to a paragraph of the writing the prompt has generated.

Here goes…

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Here’s the 195th installment, featuring , author most recently of On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Alicia Kennedy is a writer from Long Island. She is the author of the best-selling No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating, and her memoir On Eating: The Making & Unmaking of My Appetites is out today, April 14, 2026. Her newsletter on food culture, politics, and media, From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, is read by over 30,000 people weekly.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I’m 40, and I’ve been writing since I could hold a pen, putting poems in my sticker books. I’ve been writing to pay the rent for a little more than a decade.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites, out today, April 14, 2026.

What number book is this for you?

It’s my second book, or third, depending on perspective. No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating and Desde mi escritorio, a collection of my essays in translation, both came out in 2023.

This memoir is about the before, during, and after of how food has marked and defined my perspective on the world, as well as belonging, longing, diaspora, domesticity, climate change, and grief.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

It’s a memoir, told through foods and places that have marked my life.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

On Eating is about the binds and double-binds of being a girl, then a woman, who has a seemingly excessive appetite for food and experience in a world that demands restraint.

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

While working as a copy editor for a magazine, on the digital side, I was restless and needed something to do with my hands while I was tethered to my laptop for ten hours a day, so I started baking, then vegan baking, then accidentally started a vegan microbakery before there was a word for “microbakery,” and when I inevitably burned out on doing both (plus some personal things—in the book!), I decided instead to write about food. I’d wanted to be a literary critic, but my talents leaned more sensual.

This memoir is about the before, during, and after of how food has marked and defined my perspective on the world, as well as belonging, longing, diaspora, domesticity, climate change, and grief.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

Getting it published was wildly easy compared to No Meat Required, which took years of tinkering on a proposal and multiple times out to publishers. I had three meetings with big five editors within a week of my agent sending out the On Eating proposal, likely based on the success of No Meat Required and my newsletter. It was whiplash in terms of my treatment by the publishing industry. I’d also written the proposal in five hours, on a flight from Calgary to New York.

Writing it was a remarkably fast experience: I had the first draft down in eight months. I realized later that this was because I’d been thinking about this book for a very long time and was just ready to write it, and seemingly the world was ready for it.

As usual, money was hard: I tried to live on my newsletter subscriptions while writing the first draft and all of a sudden, the money wasn’t as good as it had been, likely because I’d stopped developing recipes to write the book. It’s always a game, survival. I also finished the draft quickly because I knew I had to get back to the hustle.

While working as a copy editor for a magazine, on the digital side, I was restless and needed something to do with my hands while I was tethered to my laptop for ten hours a day, so I started baking, then vegan baking, then accidentally started a vegan microbakery before there was a word for “microbakery,” and when I inevitably burned out on doing both (plus some personal things—in the book!), I decided instead to write about food. I’d wanted to be a literary critic, but my talents leaned more sensual.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

I changed one name, of an ex that I was with for a long time that anyone who’s known me my whole life will be able to recognize. There was just no getting around eleven years.

My sister and husband read near-final drafts. I made two fact-checking changes because my husband is a historian and archivist who knows Puerto Rican history very well. I called my mom probably weekly while drafting it and she kept assuring me that it was my book. Because the book covers my brother’s passing, I didn’t want her to read it until it was an object and she wouldn’t have to revisit it.

As a journalist, I’m accustomed to being fact-checked and frankly, I don’t mess facts up, but I do mess feelings up. This book is as true to me as it could be.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

Returning to Reims by Didier Eribon was my biggest inspiration, as well as the work of Kate Zambreno. Also the memoirs of Ruth Reichl, Flaneuse by Lauren Elkin, Meatless Days by Sara Suleri Goodyear, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen. Eileen Myles is always my inspiration, in terms of being true to one’s own vernacular.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

I always tell people that the form can justify the story. People are afraid that no one will care about them personally, but how can you make the reader care? That’s the work.

What do you love about writing?

Everything. It’s the only way I can communicate that doesn’t feel diminished.

What frustrates you about writing?

Money, though I do well. It’s inconsistent, and that makes me feel scarcity even when it’s not really there. I know I could get another job, but because my first media job was as a copy editor, it became important to me to prove myself, and now I’ve just been proving myself for so long…

What about writing surprises you?

That it’s endless.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I write in the morning at my desk; I write at all other times in my Notes app. My best work of late has been coming from my Notes app.

My sister and husband read near-final drafts. I made two fact-checking changes because my husband is a historian and archivist who knows Puerto Rican history very well. I called my mom probably weekly while drafting it and she kept assuring me that it was my book. Because the book covers my brother’s passing, I didn’t want her to read it until it was an object and she wouldn’t have to revisit it.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I collage and attempt watercolors. These are wholly private endeavors but they’re definitely about trying to work the non-verbal part of my brain.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I hope by the time this is published that I’ve sold another book, because taxes are now due again.

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Here’s the 194th installment, featuring , author of Bitter, Sweet: How to Heal Yourself When Your Family Is Broken. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Stephanie Weaver, MPH distills complex human experiences into accessible, compelling narratives. Her new book Bitter, Sweet: How to Heal Yourself When Your Family Is Broken is a heartfelt exploration of healing, reconciliation, and personal transformation.

As a sought-after TEDx coach, she has worked with luminaries such as Billie Jean King and Richard Dreyfuss, helping them craft transformative stories. She served as a coach for TEDxSanDiego, where she guided speakers to deliver powerful, impactful talks. Her career includes influential roles at The White House and The San Diego Zoo, where she honed her expertise in audience advocacy and storytelling.

Weaver’s personal journey as an abuse survivor who reconciled with her parents after years of estrangement informs her work, inspiring others to rewrite their own narratives and transform pain into purpose. She publishes the newsletter .

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

64. I started writing in my teens, got rejected a lot, depression took over and I stopped. I kept a journal for decades, mostly whining and swearing. Being a technical writer for museums spawned the idea for my first book: a visitor experience guide for museum professionals. I supported my museum consulting business with a blog in 2005, then created a food blog as a passion project in 2010.

Learning how to write about food and blogging regularly got me back in the habit of writing for readers. In 2013 after our beloved golden retriever died I published a pet loss memoir via Kickstarter. Around that same time, I was diagnosed with migraine disease and vertigo, which led to me writing a migraine lifestyle guide with 75 recipes followed by a full-color migraine diet cookbook.

Bitter, Sweet a personal growth memoir focused on family estrangement, forgiveness, and reconciliation. I tried unsuccessfully to sell it as a hybrid memoir-with-recipes for three years before retooling it with a service angle. While it’s not prescriptive, it includes an in-depth resource section in the back, and questions for book clubs, classroom discussion, and therapy sessions.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

Bitter, Sweet: How to Heal Yourself When Your Family Is Broken was published on April 7, 2026 from Woodhall Press.

What number book is this for you?

Five.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

It’s a personal growth memoir focused on family estrangement, forgiveness, and reconciliation. I tried unsuccessfully to sell it as a hybrid memoir-with-recipes for three years before retooling it with a service angle. While it’s not prescriptive, it includes an in-depth resource section in the back, and questions for book clubs, classroom discussion, and therapy sessions.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

“In Bitter, Sweet, Stephanie Weaver blends her personal journey of healing from childhood sexual abuse, family estrangement, and narcissistic dynamics with research and cultural context. At age 30, memories of her abuse surfaced, forcing her to confront betrayal, gaslighting, and emotional wounds. A lifeline for survivors of trauma and estrangement, Bitter, Sweet is poignant, unflinching, and “persistently hopeful,” reminding readers that healing is not just possible—it’s transformative. For anyone seeking resilience and healing, this book is a powerful guide forward.”

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

Every book I’ve written has shown up and demanded I write it. It’s highly inconvenient, as I often don’t have the skills required, they’re in different genres, and they may not have a ready audience. I’d never considered writing a memoir. For years I’d thought that once both of my parents died, I’d write a book called The High Road where I’d interview other people who have forgiven the unforgiveable and include my experience as one of the chapters. I’d had a rocky relationship with my parents since confronting my father about the incest and my mother for covering for him. We were estranged for 16 years before I forgave them and reconnected.

In 2018 I came home after eight days at my dying mother’s bedside with her recipe box. Waiting for the call that she had passed, I flipped through the recipe cards every night. I realized that her entire life was in those cards, as was mine. I started writing about the recipes, thinking I might blog about them. 15,000 words later, I realized I was writing a memoir, had no idea what I was doing, and needed help, fast. I found a local memoir certificate program and started the next week.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

I had never written memoir and didn’t know I was writing one until I was already in the weeds. Finding the container for the story was difficult. Because the recipe box had inspired the project, I held onto that device for many, many iterations. I tried using the eight days I spent at her bedside. I tried a Prologue introducing the recipe box, then framing each chapter around a recipe. I tried recipes at the beginning of each chapter, then at the end. I considered ditching the recipes altogether. It was a puzzle I wasn’t sure I was going to solve.

I assumed that having a culinary agent, a good publishing track record, and a strong work ethic would help me sell my memoir. It did not. My agent didn’t know memoir and the person she referred me to wasn’t interested. Despite this being my fifth book, it felt like I was starting over.

I thought the manuscript was ready to query in 2020 and started pitching agents. After each batch of rejections, I’d work on it, set it aside, come back to it. I did a huge round of queries in 2022. In all, 179 agents got a query from me. Sixty-five responded either with a form rejection or requests for material. Eventually all the maybes turned to no. The reasons I got from agents who loved the writing were 1) lack of platform, 2) the book was too sad, 3) memoir is too hard to sell, or 4) it didn’t grab me enough to take a chance on it.

My 4th book was coming out in July 2022, so I set the memoir aside for close to a year. I came back with a new angle of family estrangement, a switch to the personal growth genre, and a plan to pitch directly to small publishers. After completely restructuring the book for the twelfth time I sold it to Woodhall Press, one of the first five indie publishers I pitched. Call me a terrier.

In 2018 I came home after eight days at my dying mother’s bedside with her recipe box. Waiting for the call that she had passed, I flipped through the recipe cards every night. I realized that her entire life was in those cards, as was mine. I started writing about the recipes, thinking I might blog about them. 15,000 words later, I realized I was writing a memoir, had no idea what I was doing, and needed help, fast. I found a local memoir certificate program and started the next week.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

Only a few close friends and other memoirists were aware I was working on something. Since my family was and is fractured, none of them knew I was writing it. I wrote the first 50 or so drafts with the real family and place names to get the emotion right. After I felt the book had found its shape, I carefully crafted alternative names for everyone and only used general area names, like Colorado or Connecticut.

I didn’t run passages by anyone, but my next-oldest sister clarified some details on phone calls. The idea of telling my family was paralyzing, so for six years I told myself it was just a file on my computer. Once the Publishers Weekly deal report was about to publish, I told my sisters. No one in my family read it in advance, as I had been advised against that.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

I read more than 60 memoirs early on, mostly to understand the genre and see what styles I liked: experimental, memoir-in-essays, hybrid, etc. As I was working on specific aspects of the book and weaknesses in my writing, Ronit Plank, host of Let’s Talk Memoir, suggested I read specific memoirs as reference. I turned to Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle for childhood voice and how she integrated dialogue without tags, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild for time jumps and braiding, Jamie Gehring’s Madman in the Woods and Alia Volz’s Home Baked for how they handled transitions between reported content and memoir storytelling. Gina Frangello’s Blow Your House Down challenged me to write more honestly about sex.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

First understand your goals for a book project. Do you want to have the experience of just finishing a manuscript? Self-publishing and selling a few copies? Capturing your family’s story for family members? Or do you aspire to being reviewed in The New York Times? Those are very different paths to publication. Next educate yourself about writing, the genre, and the business of publishing, so you can craft a great book and have realistic expectations. Assess how much you are able to spend and invest in the project. Be willing to let go of what you thought the book was. Take feedback open-heartedly. Read a ton. Finish your first draft without rewriting. You won’t know what the book is for a while, but you don’t have anything without a first draft.

What do you love about writing?

When I’m able to craft beautiful scenes and move people, it’s highly fulfilling. My goal is to use my story to help others heal. I know it sounds lofty, but that’s what drives me. This book is the one I wish had existed when I was 25 and deeply struggling. That vision of my 25-year-old self kept me going through all the rejections. If a reader tells me they feel seen in my story, or that my story gives them permission to take action toward healing, that will feel like a win.

What frustrates you about writing?

Writing doesn’t frustrate me. Publishing and gatekeepers do. You must be fully armored to take so many rejections, especially when you see other people’s posts and it sounds like it was so much easier for them. (Fun fact: It’s not.)

What about writing surprises you?

The ability to take someone inside the intimate moments of your life is special. I’m also surprised when my writing makes me cry. It cracks me up when I read an old title of mine and don’t remember portions of it and think it’s well written.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

When I was working on the memoir, I wrote every afternoon for a two-hour block, reasoning that in three months I’d have a book. I did have a first draft in three months. I didn’t have a book for five years. I learned to take a walk if I was stuck, to make sure I was taking care of myself when writing difficult scenes, and register what emotions that day’s writing was bringing up. I survived my childhood by dissociating, so I have to pay attention to that happening and ground myself back in the present.

Currently I write a weekly post on Substack, which I usually draft midweek, then do a daily pass until it posts on Monday.

For years I’d thought that once both of my parents died, I’d write a book called The High Road where I’d interview other people who have forgiven the unforgiveable and include my experience as one of the chapters. I’d had a rocky relationship with my parents since confronting my father about the incest and my mother for covering for him. We were estranged for 16 years before I forgave them and reconnected.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I sew occasionally, do little crafty projects, and garden. I’m most creative in the kitchen these days, and eagle-eyed readers will see that four of my five books contain recipes or food descriptions. This year I wanted to get back to drawing so I bought a small 5” X 5” sketching journal. I draw one thing per day on that week’s page. I share them every week on social media, even though my drawing is not perfect.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I have an idea for a book about my disordered eating journey, and another about narrative healing. But I won’t write anything in the future that I don’t sell on proposal. I hope to be speaking about this book for a while, and perhaps that process will clarify book six.

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Here’s the 193rd installment, featuring photographer and former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist , author of Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A 90s Rock Memoir. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Melissa Auf der Maur was born and raised in Montreal, Canada, with a fine arts education. She is an acclaimed musician, photographer, curator, and producer, best known as the former bassist of rock bands Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins. In 2010 she cofounded Basilica Hudson, a multidisciplinary art center in Hudson, New York, where she lives with her family and magic cats. Find her at her website, and on Instagram and elsewhere at @xmadmx.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

54. Since I started keeping a diary at age 9.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

My first and only book so far, is called Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A 90s Rock Memoir. It came out on my 54th birthday, Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2026.

What number book is this for you?

It is my first, thrilling popping of the book cherry!

I have a book of my ‘90s photographs coming out in Sept 2026.

My parents set the stage for me to push the boundaries as a woman and creator. They were both masters of the word, and to them values, perspective and informed opinions were gold. Not monetary gain or popularity. Fighting a good fight, and standing for your autonomous value system was how they lived, and showed me how to live. My journey through the epic ’90s rock bands I was in, is defined by how I was raised, and my drive to tell the story, to contribute to the historic arc of culture shifting.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

Memoir. It is an ode to the decade that defined me and my generation: 1991-2001. I feel it is safe to say it is a memoir, within the creative limits of memoir / non-fiction, but I have also described it as: Part coming-of-age, part travel diary, part psychedelic scrapbook, held together with a thread of mysticism, as a reminder that we all exist beyond the HERE and NOW.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

It is an ode to the decade that defined me and my generation:1991-2001, the last analog decade, told through the particular lens of a redhead, bass player, photographer, good girl Canadian.

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

My origin story as a human in this lifetime, defines it all. Daughter of pioneering counter-culture journalists, broadcasters, cool as shit members of their generation, in the city that raised me, Montreal. The top of the book is an ode them, as writers and activists devoted to the city they lived in. Without them, and the time and place they were responding to in full force engagement, I would not have had the amazing life I’ve had in music and culture.

They set the stage for me to push the boundaries as a woman and creator. They were both masters of the word, and to them values, perspective and informed opinions were gold. Not monetary gain or popularity. Fighting a good fight, and standing for your autonomous value system was how they lived, and showed me how to live. My journey through the epic ’90s rock bands I was in, is defined by how I was raised, and my drive to tell the story, to contribute to the historic arc of culture shifting.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

I will be honest, the book flowed with the ease of a waterfall. I’ve explained it like a download from the past, rushing into my words. Writing it was bliss. (I know that may not always be the case, perhaps beginners luck!?) But it certainly helped me with the motivation to get it out there and find an agent to help me get it published.

The only hard part was deciding on the cover! The publishers were incredibly supportive of my vision and version of the book, and the only parameters they gave me was that the cover had to be me, with a bass, in the 90s … so, that meant roaming the internet and Getty Images for live images taken by pros, or some of my own self portraits on stage, which were tad too arty and abstract, but in theory that is what I wanted, my own lens on stage, taken by me. We ended up settling for the shot by Mitch Gerber because it captures many meaningful details in one shot: taken on stage, only weeks into being in the band Hole at the tender age of 22, wearing all my protective symbolism: My Irish grandmother’s Celtic cross, Pisces belt buckle as bass strap decoration, multiple mini Venus Botticelli’s around my neck, a pink glitter Playboy Bunny as act of taking back the power, my middle finger powerfully posed and my far far far away distant gaze, above it all. So in one shot, it said a lot. It was the only one of the pros that did it all.

The only hard part was deciding on the cover! We ended up settling for the shot of me by Mitch Gerber because it captures many meaningful details in one shot: taken on stage, only weeks into being in the band Hole at the tender age of 22, wearing all my protective symbolism: My Irish grandmother’s Celtic cross, Pisces belt buckle as bass strap decoration, multiple mini Venus Botticelli’s around my neck, a pink glitter Playboy Bunny as act of taking back the power, my middle finger powerfully posed and my far far far away distant gaze, above it all. So in one shot, it said a lot.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

I notified every major character in advance that I was writing the book, as way of getting handshake “approval/warning.” The three major characters, beyond my parents, all more or less told me they trusted me, and know that I really am a “good girl” and have never been in it for the power or the glory, always in it for seeking of truth and discovery. I did get Courtney’s approval to replicate two of her 90s letters to me, and use of some Hole lyrics.

The only person I had review any writing was my mother, as Chapter 1: Dreamy Frontline Feminist, is her devoted to her, and wanted to make sure I had all the facts right. Otherwise, I told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (as I remember it) so help me goddess.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

Models of perfection in memoir, around specific time and place: Just Kids, and Hold Still, by Sally Mann. Both some of my favorites, and referenced as comparable, and BOTH authors have delivered incredible follow-ups this past year, that I like even more, because they go deeper into the parts of them more unknown. Incredible writers, and both, like me, photographers.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

I honestly don’t have any yet … my situation as a musician, photographer, turned author, is an anomaly, so cannot offer anything to them on the subject. But my advice to all people, all the time, is stay true to you, don’t try to be like anyone else, and listen to your dreams (your actual dreams, they are channeling powerful parts of you untapped unconscious) and your heart—what makes you happy, feel alive, and get up in the morning.

What do you love about writing?

Being quiet alone, with cat on lap, by the fire.

What frustrates you about writing?

Using a computer, because I type faster than I write. My handwriting is illegible and huge. It takes up too much space. It would never work to write a book by hand, although I believe additional magic lies in that process, which is why I continue to keep a journal.

What about writing surprises you?

That things come out of nowhere, beyond you and your mind. Channeled from the beyond, like music, but more literal. Ha.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I have found that I can write anytime, anywhere, for any amount of time. I know that also may not last forever. For a long day, with writing deadline attached, I tend to start in the morning after my daughter has gone off to school, make a cup of black tea with splash of maple syrup and milk, make a fire if cold out and sit in a big enough arm chair, to accommodate one of my cats on my lap.

I notified every major character in advance that I was writing the book, as way of getting handshake “approval / warning.” The three major characters, beyond my parents, all more or less told me they trusted me, and know that I really am a “good girl” and have never been in it for the power or the glory, always in it for seeking of truth and discovery. I did get Courtney’s approval to replicate two of her 90s letters to me, and use of some Hole lyrics.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

So many—writing is my newest of many. I am a professional musician, photographer, curator and producer. I have worked in music, film and the performing arts, full time, for a living, for the last 30 years. This is my first book.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

My ‘90s Rock Photographs, a book of my photography, comes out on DelMonico / D.A.P. in Sept 2026, as a visual companion to my memoir. In many ways, the memoir is the mission statement, and the photography is the visceral share.

Previously profiled Melissa Auf der Maur for .

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Readers,

During my eight years as the editorial director of a wonderful storytelling non-profit called TMI Project, I often had to come up with writing prompts for workshops I led. I had a knack for consistently coming up with a varied assortment that jogged people’s brains, eliciting productive writing (something I’d first developed as a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter of memoirs), and leading the executive director to nickname me “The Prompt-O-Matic.” I thought I’d repurpose that knack over here, in The Lit Lab, offering weekly prompts for paid subscribers. This is the 113th installment.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Your mind can latch onto a prompt very literally, or lead you toward something altogether different from the suggestion at hand. I’ve also found there are some writers for whom, no matter how they’re prompted, the same story emerges—a story that stubbornly won’t go away until it gets dumped onto the page. Sometimes it’s the story you need to write; other times, it’s the story you need to get out of your way before anything else can come through. Either way, being prompted helps move the writer forward.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Writing prompts can also help dissolve writers’ block, especially when you respond to them while racing against a timer. I know from experience; when I started at TMI Project, I myself had been blocked for some time. To encourage workshop participants, I figured I’d “take the workshop with them,” doing twenty-minute free-writes alongside them, using my own prompts. It instantly unblocked me, freeing me to write story after story.

Below the paywall is the 113th prompt in this series. Use it however you’d like to spark new writing, ***but please don’t share it with anyone else. I hope to someday publish a book of these. And I use them in my teaching.

My writing prompts are offered as a perk for those who pay to support my work. Thank you for your support! 🙏

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I invite those taking part in this to leave, in the comments, up to a paragraph of the writing the prompt has generated.

Here goes…

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Here’s the 192nd installment, featuring Kate Crane, author of What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane? A Memoir and a Murder Investigation. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Kate Crane is a writer and editor. Early in her career she worked with Wall Street Journal publications and put out a scrappy NYC alt weekly with two good friends and a skeleton crew. In those years, she covered music regularly for Time Out New York and Brooklyn Rail. She has copy-chiefed for many national magazines; she still misses laboring over page proofs. What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane? A Memoir and a Murder Investigation is her first book. A Baltimore native and longtime New Yorker, Crane currently lives in California.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I’m 51, and I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane? A Memoir and a Murder Investigation is out today, April 7, 2026, on Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HarperCollins.

What number book is this for you?

WEHTEC is my debut.

One night in 1987, my dad called to say he was on his way home from his trucking business in Baltimore. He never showed up. It was such a 180 from his routine that I knew instantly: He had to be dead. I never saw my father again. Twenty years later, now a journalist in New York City, I decided to seek out answers. I worked with Baltimore’s Cold Case Unit and everyone I could find who might be able to shed some light on my dad’s disappearance, and my dad himself.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

The book is an investigative memoir, a hybrid of memoir and journalism.

I nearly walked away from this project a hundred times because I can’t stomach the ways in which true crime media—books, TV, streaming series, and especially all those awful podcasts—tends to exploit, sensationalize, dehumanize. I did not want to feed my family tragedy to the true crime vultures.

I eventually landed on a path forward: Memoir would be my book’s foundation. I would attempt to portray the ways in which a crime rippled through my life across decades. I aimed to prioritize sensitivity and vulnerability. My journalism skills were my north star in exploring Dad’s murder with integrity.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

One night in 1987, my dad called to say he was on his way home from his trucking business in Baltimore. He never showed up. It was such a 180 from his routine that I knew instantly: He had to be dead. I never saw my father again. Twenty years later, now a journalist in New York City, I decided to seek out answers. I worked with Baltimore’s Cold Case Unit and everyone I could find who might be able to shed some light on my dad’s disappearance, and my dad himself. What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane? is part memoir, part true crime, part psychological suspense.

What’s the back story of this book, including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

When I was very young, under 10, I wrote fairytales in a set of notebooks die cut into shapes like hot air balloons. The paper inside was pink and ruled. As a tween, I tapped out a heterosexual love story on a sky-blue typewriter in my grandparents’ basement.

In high school, I wrote an essay about the poetry of Anne Sexton. My AP English teacher, Paul Barker, held it up to the class and said, “Katy Crane is a writer.” I didn’t know until he said it, despite the fairytales and the typewritten teen romance. I believed him and proceeded accordingly.

In the late 90s, I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, down the street from Pete Hausler, an editor at the literary journal Post Road. He published an essay I wrote about swimming. There’s a scene in WEHTEC that takes place outside St. Mark’s Bookshop—that was also the bookstore where I first picked up Post Road, held it in my hands, and saw my work in its pages. I wrote for World War 3 Illustrated, Clamor, and the Indypendent around this time. When I fell into a job at New York Press, an alt weekly, in 2002, I learned how to write a lot, and quickly.

The book itself began to take shape in 2007. I realized, with alarm, that the 20-year anniversary of my dad’s disappearance was coming up. I’d been in denial about the passing of time. The fog lifted and I was, to put it mildly, agitated. At the time I was deputy managing editor at SmartMoney, the personal finance magazine of The Wall Street Journal. I edited satirist Joe Queenan’s monthly column. I told Joe about my dad one day on the phone or at lunch and he said, “This is a book.” He helped me a great deal in the early years of what was ultimately an 11-year road to selling the book on proposal.

The first submission with my first literary agent failed, and then I was adrift for quite some time. I sold an early excerpt to The New York Times and they killed it—twice. In early 2015 I moved to Silicon Valley to work for an ill-fated media startup. That fall, I rewrote that essay and we ran it on our website. I didn’t want to do a book anymore. This was year eight. I’d unofficially ended my investigation in 2012, and I was exhausted, and working seven-day weeks in a profoundly toxic environment. I told myself I’d be open to a book only if I met a literary agent who made me feel excited.

I’m at a loss to convey how stressful and exhausting this whole thing was—no way could someone make me feel excited. Except then I heard from William LoTurco. We redid the proposal over the next few years and sold it to John Glynn at Hanover Square Press in 2018. It took me another seven years to write and rewrite the book.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

People kept dying. In 2016, I lost my only local friend in a car crash. I was already depleted from sulphuric abuse at that startup (whose founder was later convicted of multiple felonies) and the cross-country move the year previous. It was a pitch-black era; I narrowly avoided homelessness, and worse. To continue work on the book from 2016 to 2018 took reserves of grit I still scarcely believe existed. I have neon memories of that time: dictating pieces of the book proposal from my bed before work after crying all night, coaxing myself to complete one paragraph at a time, over and over.

Between 2019 and 2023, I lost two of my closest friends of three decades, and also my godmother. Gordon Porterfield, Marie Collins, and Yvonne Hughes are all named in the dedication of WEHTEC.

Beyond the deaths: I was always working full-time jobs, often with long hours, to stay afloat while chiseling away at this project. There was also a massive psychological hurdle. This book mostly seemed like a ridiculous dream I would never, could never, bring to life. I had to muzzle or do fisticuffs with that albatross until almost the very end, when even I could not deny that WEHTEC was real and happening.

I nearly walked away from this project a hundred times because I can’t stomach the ways in which true crime media—books, TV, streaming series, and especially all those awful podcasts—tends to exploit, sensationalize, dehumanize. I did not want to feed my family tragedy to the true crime vultures. I eventually landed on a path forward: Memoir would be my book’s foundation. I would attempt to portray the ways in which a crime rippled through my life across decades. I aimed to prioritize sensitivity and vulnerability.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

I omitted the names of some family members altogether. I changed some names and identifying details: exgirlfriends, sources who feared for their safety, criminals involved in my father’s murder who might still pose a threat. I did not change the name of anyone in the Baltimore Police Department. My old neighbor from Jersey City suggested we rename him Finn, in tribute to his chocolate lab, beloved to us both.

I showed passages of the book or the entire manuscript to people with whom I had an active relationship that I wished to maintain. In summer 2024, I took a workshop with Melissa Febos and developed that modus operandi based on her lectures. (It might be verbatim what she shared about her own process, or I may have altered it slightly.)

A handful of people had minor tweaks, which I made. Mostly, though, there were no changes. My old housemate Harold declined to read the passages that feature him, but he did contest my version of events in one scene. I discuss the discrepancy in the author’s note.

There’s a scorching quote from a friend of my father’s toward the end of the book that I was sure he’d want me to cut. He said STET.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

Jesmyn Ward, Angela Carter and Donna Tartt are among the writers I love the most for their impeccably honed voices. They are a thousand percent who they are, unlike any other writer on Earth. They’ve inspired me to relentlessly refine my skills.

The Goldfinch by Tartt influenced WEHTEC. When I first read it, I recognized my own grief and alienation over my own lost parent permeating its 771 pages. The Goldfinch became a sort of lighthouse: In connecting with the tides of emotion it evoked, I made my way, scene by scene, toward how I wanted my pages to feel.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

The question is about aspiring writers “looking to publish a book like mine,” so I take that as a long, arduous, potentially dangerous journey. Don’t be cocky. You could get hurt doing a project like this, so establish guardrails and rewards. And prepare in every way for a marathon. You can’t work all the time, especially if you have a full-time job. I mostly did. It took a serious toll.

I made a pact with myself in 2007 that I must either maintain the baseline of sanity I was starting out with (it was a Cascadia fault line but it was my Cascadia fault line) or get stronger and healthier. This project had the potential to kill me. So I promised myself that if I experienced a dramatic deterioration in mental health, I would walk away.

Get clear, no matter how long it takes, on what you can take. What are the deal breakers, the things that would make you cut your losses to save your own life if your project turned into quicksand? Identify what you want to walk away with on pub day, besides the book you hold in your hands. I set goals such as better writing skills, fortitude, a brighter love for myself.

What do you love about writing?

I love the moment when I shift from thinking that a) whatever I’m working on will never work, and I’ve bitten off more than I can chew this time to b) oh it’s all falling together and I kind of love it, and real quick let me read it through.

That moment usually leads to days of immersion. And recidivism into my natural vampire state. In those times of connection to my work, I’ll keep at it until 4 or 5 in the morning, or later. I feel alive and valuable, and like I’m earning my keep as a human being.

Another thing I love about this kind of time is that usually it represents a payoff from an instinct I’ve had for weeks or months—about a chapter, or an essay I’m writing. I love seeing big pieces come together from a line here and there, interviews I’ve conducted, outlines made and revised. It makes me delight in my brain.

What frustrates you about writing?

I’ve written a book that Harper Collins has published that has so far been well received and I still worry that I can’t do it. Well, I already did it. Yes, but that’s the past. What if now I can’t? Well, of course I can. But what if I can’t??

What about writing surprises you?

Deeply immersing in a project consistently leads to work happening while I’m sleeping. As in: I wake up with entire paragraphs ready to go, which I race to jot into a notebook. Then time will pass, and I think, I must have exaggerated. There’s no way so much work could unfold while I’m unconscious. And then it happens again. Also, it doesn’t make sense that when I am sitting at a keyboard or walking around dictating into a device, story flies out of me. Where did it come from? I’ll worry that I have nothing to say, for the ten-billionth time in my life. Then I set myself up to work, and the words are there, as if they were waiting for the airplane cabin door to unlock.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

It depends on the phase of a project and where I am geographically. I wrote much of the book at a library, and, for years, Sundays were book-writing days. I live in a small apartment, and I have no control over who my neighbors are. Sometimes they’re quiet. Sometimes they’re not. When I can, I travel to an off-the-grid location, and, with the silence and privacy, I’ll write every night.

Outside of crunch times, I’ve been trying out co-writing sessions with accountability partners. No vampire hours—more like 11am. So far, this experiment is effective. It helps me to have a friend or two on a video call who’s also doing their work.

The book itself began to take shape in 2007. I realized, with alarm, that the 20-year anniversary of my dad’s disappearance was coming up. I’d been in denial about the passing of time. The fog lifted and I was, to put it mildly, agitated. At the time I was deputy managing editor at SmartMoney, the personal finance magazine of The Wall Street Journal. I edited satirist Joe Queenan’s monthly column. I told Joe about my dad one day on the phone or at lunch and he said, “This is a book.”

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I’m a photographer… I taught myself manual photography in the 90s. I still shoot film, and I use my old iPhone as a photo journal. I write haikus almost daily, and essentially hold an ongoing conversation in haiku with a couple friends on the internet. That practice is kind of like tossing a ball into a bank of fog and smiling in complete surprise every time another haiku-ball soars back in my direction.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

My next book is a novel—I’m in the early stages.

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Here’s the 191st installment, featuring , author of Girl Gone Wild: A Memoir. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Courtney Kocak is a writer, podcaster, and comedian who splits time between Austin and Los Angeles. She wrote for Amazon’s Emmy-winning animated series Danger & Eggs and Netflix’s Know It All. She’s produced a slew of highly-ranked podcasts and currently hosts three of her own with over two million downloads to date: Private Parts Unknown, about love and sexuality around the world, The Bleeders, about book writing and publishing, and Podcast Bestie, a best friend to podcasters trying to grow and monetize their shows (and a popular Substack). As a writer, her bylines include The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan, Slate, HuffPost, and more. Her debut memoir, Girl Gone Wild (Trio House Press), is out now!

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I’m 42, and I’ve been writing essays and memoir for a little over 15 years—though I started screenwriting about six months before that.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

Girl Gone Wild just came out this week on April 1st!

What number book is this for you?

One! My debut memoir.

Girl Gone Wild is a collection of exploits and delusions about chasing your dreams with reckless abandon—and what happens when that pursuit becomes a new kind of trap.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

It’s a memoir-in-essays, which I think is the perfect format for a first book in that you can work on and refine the essays as their own units first, then revise holistically. The essays in Girl Gone Wild are episodic but very much in conversation with each other. I think of them as crêpes—individually snackable, but collectively filling.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

“Girl Gone Wild is a collection of exploits and delusions about chasing your dreams with reckless abandon—and what happens when that pursuit becomes a new kind of trap. Author Courtney Kocak is an actress-turned-writer who transplanted herself from the quiet cornfields of rural Minnesota to the filthy heart of Hollywood in her painfully protracted quest to “make it” in a time before our lives were flattened by the internet—a longer, more arduous journey than she ever imagined, full of unexpected detours, like falling in love with an abusive asshole and eventually having his abortion, a Model Mayhem photo shoot gone wrong, acting in independent films, a Craigslist massage for money, getting paid to kick a guy in the balls, getting hooked on Adderall, selling T-shirts on the Girls Gone Wild tour, and so much more. In Girl Gone Wild, Kocak takes readers along on her heady metamorphosis from girl to woman and from dreamer to professional artist, as she is transformed in this unwitting feminist coming-of-age.”

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

I write about much of this in Girl Gone Wild, but the CliffsNotes version is that I was a frustrated actress who started screenwriting as a means to create opportunities for myself—and then realized, “Oooh, this is my real passion.” Around the same time, I went through a brutal breakup and wrote an essay for TheGloss.com’s “I Regret Everything” week. I loved reading that site, and that prompt was the challenge I needed to try to make sense of that relationship. I was hooked!

I started taking writing classes and read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things, which led me to other writers— , , and of course (ed. note: 😍)—and gave me a vision for the type of writer I wanted to be. A mere fifteen years later, my first book baby is finally out in the world—the first of many—and I couldn’t be more grateful for this incredible writing journey.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

It was incredibly hard to be patient and wait for the book deal to materialize, but in retrospect I’m glad things worked out the way they did.

I found the final stages of revision—after I had a pub date to work toward—to be highly fraught. I was worried I would never feel done and would have to promote the book with a pit in my stomach. Luckily, I kept working really hard until the end, and I’m happy to say that I’m truly proud of where the book landed.

I was a frustrated actress who started screenwriting as a means to create opportunities for myself—and then realized, “Oooh, this is my real passion.” Around the same time, I went through a brutal breakup and wrote an essay for TheGloss.com’s “I Regret Everything” week. I loved reading that site, and that prompt was the challenge I needed to try to make sense of that relationship. I was hooked!

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

I changed most names and a lot of identifying details. I fact-checked myself as much as possible and also did a legal read to make sure I was handling everything appropriately. I tried to keep the narrative centered on my story and did my best to avoid sharing unnecessary information about others—even if I felt like it was funny or bumped up against my story in an interesting way.

I sent relevant pages to a handful of people. Anyone I checked with was flattered by their depiction, though a few wanted their names changed because of their professional lives. No one requested changes beyond that, which made me feel good about how I handled the characterizations—I really tried to be fair.

I asked my childhood best friend if she wanted me to change her name, but she was comfortable with me using her first name. My college bestie (we’re still close) has been so supportive. She generously read the entire manuscript as I was nearing the end and wanted me to keep her name as well. I changed the names of all my exes.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work?

I already mentioned Cheryl Strayed, who was endlessly influential. Chloe Caldwell was also a super inspiring author on my journey. I took her memoir incubator not once but twice—the first time in 2020 and again in 2023. I still had a lot of revising to do after those, but the first generator helped me produce a rough draft, and the second helped me figure out the bones of the book.

I love Chloe’s writing—her debut essay collection Legs Get Led Astray had me in a chokehold, and she’s followed that with equal brilliance—and I admire her DIY, don’t-give-a-fuck approach to the industry, which really helped me trust my instincts to go with a small press for this book.

Other major influences include Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water, ’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, ’s entire oeuvre, and of course humor king David Sedaris.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

Just start. You don’t have to know anything to dream and start putting words on the page. Be curious about the process. Don’t rush—slow is actually fast. I’m so glad I didn’t publish this book earlier than I did. It took fifteen years to cook. I don’t think my next book will take that long, but I’m grateful this one had proper time to marinate, and that I had time to grow into my wisdom as a person. Wherever you are on your journey, you’re right on time.

Rejection is essential to accomplishing anything big, and sometimes it’s protective. Embrace it and keep going.

Writing a memoir can be therapeutic and liberating. Girl Gone Wild helped make me the person I wanted to be. Give your book everything it requires—classes, time, money, your heart—and it will change you in the most beautiful ways.

What do you love about writing?

Learning about myself and the world. Not being able to lie to myself. The community of curious souls who do this work.

What frustrates you about writing?

Some of the things I love about writing also frustrate me: the time, money, and life force it requires. I’ve also been frustrated in the past when my taste was better than my execution, but the more you do it, the better you get. The rewards are so sweet, though—any frustration is totally worth it.

What about writing surprises you?

The industry is changing in surprising ways. I’m currently researching and writing about this for my MFA critical paper, which I hope to publish somewhere like Lit Hub (stay tuned). And of course I’m always making surprising emotional and craft discoveries—one of the most delightful aspects of writing.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I have a daily writing practice of 750 words, but since I’m writing so many different things, when it comes to books I’m more of a binger. I love earmarking a week, or ideally two—a month or two is my favorite—and just going nuts on a project. That kind of deep work is so fulfilling and really elevates the manuscript.

I’m excited about this book launch phase of Girl Gone Wild and trying to revel in the whole experience (and certainly not wanting time to move faster), but I can’t wait for this summer and fall when I’ll be digging in deep on my second memoir, which is already in progress. It’s such an awesome premise—I’m obsessed with the themes, and I’ve already written some badass pages—so that manuscript is calling to me like the best fuck of my life.

I found the final stages of revision—after I had a pub date to work toward—to be highly fraught. I was worried I would never feel done and would have to promote the book with a pit in my stomach. Luckily, I kept working really hard until the end, and I’m happy to say that I’m truly proud of where the book landed.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun?

I’m also a podcaster; I host Private Parts Unknown, The Bleeders, and Podcast Bestie. And I do stand-up comedy, which is honestly better than sex. I teach writing and podcasting, and all of it combines into my multi-hyphenate career.

I’m obsessed with all my creative pursuits, so I don’t really have much free time for other hobbies.

Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I love reading and taking long walks—both are hugely helpful for my writing.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

Yes! The aforementioned second memoir. I’ve also written a fantastic TV pilot related to Girl Gone Wild, which I hope to find a good home for. And a bunch of other things, including my first novel. I’m hoping to publish a book every year or two for the next couple of decades. I find the process to be so life-affirming.

Thanks for letting me nerd out about writing! I’m such a fan of yours and love what you’ve built with Memoir Land and your whole ecosystem. (Check out my interview with Sari here—it’s a personal fave.)

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Readers,

During my eight years as the editorial director of a wonderful storytelling non-profit called TMI Project, I often had to come up with writing prompts for workshops I led. I had a knack for consistently coming up with a varied assortment that jogged people’s brains, eliciting productive writing (something I’d first developed as a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter of memoirs), and leading the executive director to nickname me “The Prompt-O-Matic.” I thought I’d repurpose that knack over here, in The Lit Lab, offering weekly prompts for paid subscribers. This is the 112th installment.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Your mind can latch onto a prompt very literally, or lead you toward something altogether different from the suggestion at hand. I’ve also found there are some writers for whom, no matter how they’re prompted, the same story emerges—a story that stubbornly won’t go away until it gets dumped onto the page. Sometimes it’s the story you need to write; other times, it’s the story you need to get out of your way before anything else can come through. Either way, being prompted helps move the writer forward.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Writing prompts can also help dissolve writers’ block, especially when you respond to them while racing against a timer. I know from experience; when I started at TMI Project, I myself had been blocked for some time. To encourage workshop participants, I figured I’d “take the workshop with them,” doing twenty-minute free-writes alongside them, using my own prompts. It instantly unblocked me, freeing me to write story after story.

Below the paywall is the 112th prompt in this series. Use it however you’d like to spark new writing, ***but please don’t share it with anyone else. I hope to someday publish a book of these. And I use them in my teaching.

My writing prompts are offered as a perk for those who pay to support my work. Thank you for your support! 🙏

Subscribe now

I invite those taking part in this to leave, in the comments, up to a paragraph of the writing the prompt has generated.

Here goes…

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Here’s the 190th installment, featuring , author of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Jodi-Ann Burey (she/her) is a writer, critic, and sought-after speaker on race, culture, and health equity. She is the author of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work. Her essays appear in various arts, business, and literary publications. Jodi-Ann created and hosts the prose and poetry salon and podcast Lit Lounge: The People’s Art. She was born in Jamaica, raised in New York City and lives in Seattle.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

Right now, my age is not a searchable data point online and I want to see how long that lasts! That said, I’m probably as old as you think I am.

I’ve been writing since grade school. I saw my older sister writing, and like most younger siblings, wanted to try it myself. My early writings were poems. I still have my elementary school publication about fish getting caught in plastic in the ocean. I wrote a poem about the Columbine school shooting, which had a profound impact on me. I won an award for a poem about my grandmother who died before I had any real memories of her. I spent too much time and too many years writing poems about boys. These days, I write creative non-fiction. I am obsessed with essays.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work. It was published by Flatiron Books in September, 2025.

What number book is this for you?

One.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

I think of Authentic as a critical memoir, although I’m not sure that’s a real category. Authentic is a work of criticism that blends memoir, reportage, pop culture, and interviews.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

Have you ever heard someone say, “Bring your full authentic self to work” and roll your eyes? Authentic is that eye roll in book form. Authentic is a critical examination of workplace culture that cyclically trades on our identities when it is convenient and profitable. It’s a call to reimagine and redefine what agency means for us at work.

I began writing seriously in college, soon after a professor/mentor introduced me to bell hooks. bell wrote Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism at 19 years old. I read it for the first time when I was 19. Somehow that connection made me believe a career as a writer was possible. bell took her curiosities seriously, and turned her own critical engagement with pop culture into theories and knowledge. Her work inspired me to take my own curiosities seriously.

What’s the back story of this book, including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

I began writing seriously in college, soon after a professor/mentor introduced me to bell hooks. bell wrote Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism at 19 years old. I read it for the first time when I was 19. Somehow that connection made me believe a career as a writer was possible. bell took her curiosities seriously, and turned her own critical engagement with pop culture into theories and knowledge. Her work inspired me to take my own curiosities seriously. Nobody enjoyed watching TV with me in college. I was (and mostly still am) insufferable.

I wrote here and there after college, but mostly for myself or a job. I wanted to publish, but fear really kept me back. Like most life crises, everything changed when I was diagnosed in 2018 with a spinal cord tumor. I wrote feverishly leading up to my surgery and during my hospitalization. I haven’t stopped since.

Authentic is derived from a talk I gave for TEDxSeattle in November 2020. That talk came from a 2019 graduate seminar lecture I gave at the University of Washington. That seminar came from a rant I had in a private conversation earlier that year. That rant came from my frustration with always hearing people saying “Come as you are,” and “Bring your full authentic self to work.”

I noticed those narratives more because I’d become increasingly sensitive to platitudes after my 2018 diagnosis. Facing such a major health crisis, my whole world was filled with platitudes from well-meaning people who did not have the capacity or courage to be honest. Everyone said, “Take it a day at a time.” Do you know how long a day is when you’re in pain, stuck in a hospital bed? I remember asking my doctor once whether surgery would paralyze me for the rest of my life and he was the only person who told the truth: “It’s possible, but not probable.” In that spirit, I did not try to write a hopeful book. I just wanted to be honest.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

I have a spinal cord injury and must manage neuropathic pain all over my body, every moment of every day. The hardest aspect of writing, first, is its physical toll. Sitting in place at a desk for a long time is very uncomfortable. Writing longhand stresses my shoulder after just a few minutes. I usually write from home because I can control my environment and body to best fit my physical needs.

Because Authentic started with a TED talk, I struggled at first to break its tone. TED talks are more plain-spoken and service-oriented than I imagined for a book. I knew my stylistic choices might make marketing Authentic more challenging. It’s not a how-to book, nor is it a traditional “work book.” Authentic is a deeply memoiric, artful storytelling about our lives at work. I find it fascinating that we can imagine and engage with books that artfully examine poverty, voting, and homelessness, but it’s as if all our writing about our professional lives must only serve the institution. Not to be corny, but I found it impossible to write a book about authenticity without my authenticity. I learned to write what fed me, not what was expected of me.

Have you ever heard someone say, “Bring your full authentic self to work” and roll your eyes? Authentic is that eye roll in book form. Authentic is a critical examination of workplace culture that cyclically trades on our identities when it is convenient and profitable. It’s a call to reimagine and redefine what agency means for us at work.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make the changes they requested?

For people I interviewed, I used a process of radical consent: I provided interview questions in advance; some interviewees I spoke with twice, or clarified some answers via email; I reviewed quotes/passages and gave each person the option to revise (clarify statements, remove identifying details, change their names, etc). I had one interviewee pull her quotes completely because of the changing climate targeting undocumented and trans people. This happened very late in the final editing process. I decided to remove her whole section and a special note of why that story was missing since it affirmed the larger point of the book about the cycling way we trade on marginalized identities within institutions.

I did not reach out to former colleagues and employers I discuss unfavorably in the book. I also anonymized the companies I used to work for: The Schools, The Gym, The Org, The Start Up, The Store. I made that choice not to protect the companies or myself, but to protect the book. I didn’t want the distraction that any one company is a bad actor. These dynamics exist everywhere. It’s a bad system.

For family, friends, and my doctors I discuss neutrally or favorably, I didn’t run any passages by them. I used my doctor’s name, with permission. When I told my mother I secretly recorded her and included her quotes, she told me (jokingly, I hope!) I needed to pay her.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work?

I was inspired by Kiese Laymon’s How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (Second Edition). It’s a polyphonic text in that he includes so many voices in such a slim essay collection. For example, Kiese structures one chapter with him and six other writers writing letters to each other. Most of that essay is not Kiese’s own words. It gave me permission to make space for more voices in Authentic.

I’m also really inspired by Tressie McMillan Cottom’s essay collection, Thick: and Other Essays. I’ve read it cover to cover about six or seven times. Her mind is so brilliant, but I find her style, down to the sentence level, really compelling. Tressie has such a refined skill of making complex sociological concepts accessible. It comes across as a values-driven way of writing and working I hope to emulate in my own way.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

It took three years to write Authentic, and an additional year of final edits until publication. Although this timeline was unplanned, it meant my writing was bookended by the 2020 and 2024 U.S. presidential elections. Cultural narratives, institutional policies, and federal law transformed how we treated and talked about identity at work during that time. I had a bit of anxiety that Authentic would feel “old” and come out at the “wrong time.”

I find it difficult, especially when I write about structural inequities, to want your work to be both timely and timeless. Still, I think any artist wants their work to resonate with audiences. To feel fresh and meaningful to them. I worked through my anxiety by reminding myself that Authentic was not reportage. My job wasn’t to speak to headlines, but about patterns and cycles. However overwhelming and disheartened I might feel about this, the reality is, the very worst violences and inequities we face right now have been faced in varying degrees before. I think the job of the critic is to identify patterns that can help readers locate an issue or even themselves across place and time. For aspiring writers looking to publish books that both meet a moment and live beyond it, widen your lens and see, we are not alone.

What do you love about writing?

I love/hate the blank page. It is so terrifying. The best way to describe it is standing at the edge of a diving board. I’m afraid to jump, but I’m also afraid not to jump. I know the water is safe, but I still have to convince myself I will be okay. Perhaps it’s not fear? Perhaps it’s the thrill that just feels like fear, or it’s easier to talk about that feeling as fear. I love that thrill when I write. It might take some time, but I always end up finding that version of me who believes I’ll be okay.

What frustrates you about writing?

I don’t think I’ll ever write sentences as good as the ones in my head. I think that’s the point. My aspirations for my writing should be ahead of my skill set at the time. I hope that chase will continue to elevate my work.

What about writing surprises you?

I love writing non-fiction! It’s so cool to me when I reread something I wrote and realize how accurately it captures both the emotional truth and facts of what happened. Before Authentic published, I visited my former physiatrist and read the sections of the book that included our interactions. I recreated the scene of my spinal cord tumor diagnosis from memory. I never journaled about that moment, or verified our interaction before my manuscript went to production. When I finished reading he said, in his very matter-of-fact kind of way, “That is exactly what happened.” The factual and emotional truth of that scene also felt factually and emotionally true for the only other person that was there.

I am always so surprised by the process of interpreting such dynamic life experiences within the restrictions of 26 letters. How did something I read on a page, transport my mind and body that way? It’s truly magic how something so flat—literally words on a page—can translate and transport us to such depth.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I never wanted to establish a particular routine because I never want to be discouraged if I couldn’t have my things just so. That said, I always take care of my body first. I’ll usually do a quick at-home yoga practice alone and walk my dog before I start. I put on my “writing clothes,” which is usually a short cotton skirt and a cotton tank top and make sure the temperature in my apartment is warm and I have my heating pad at my feet. I usually write to myself first before I write write. I like to talk to myself in my journal: how I’m feeling, how yesterday’s writing went, what I want to accomplish for the day. Usually this kind of administrative writing leads to “real” writing and I have to leave my couch for my desk.

I work mostly at my desk, but I often take my writing with me. I’ll voice record myself on a run. I bring a journal in the sauna. I’ve written pages and pages in saunas. At times I need brainstorming sessions when I can just write in a stream of consciousness, without even stopping to correct typos or anything. I like to do that work in coffee shops. The buzz reminds me there’s more life than what’s happening in my own brain, and lets me write more freely.

I write everyday if I’m working on a specific project. I’ll start at any time and go for however many hours I can. If I’m close to a deadline, I’ll write straight for three days, or however many days I give myself to be on “high alert.” Those days I write around the clock. I hate hate hate that kind of self-induced chaos, but having one thing to do quiets my mind.

Authentic is a deeply memoiric, artful storytelling about our lives at work. I find it fascinating that we can imagine and engage with books that artfully examine poverty, voting, and homelessness, but it’s as if all our writing about our professional lives must only serve the institution. Not to be corny, but I found it impossible to write a book about authenticity without my authenticity. I learned to write what fed me, not what was expected of me.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I defined myself as a visual artist well before I became interested in writing. I rediscovered my love for visual art while writing Authentic. I enrolled in an oil painting class at a local arts school in Seattle. It began as a way to rest my mind, find a sense of play in my artistry, and discipline myself to leave my writing desk. I think every artist should have an artistic outlet outside their discipline. While I do think of myself as a painter now, I know I don’t have to be good at painting. Nobody is waiting for my paintings. I don’t eat from my paintings. It’s my place to play.

Besides artistic play, I consider recreational play vital to my writing practice too. I snowboard about once a week in the winter and paddleboard a few times a week in the summer. I like to run, play tennis, and lift weights. Writing is so heady, for me, I sometimes forget I have a body (which is complicated given my disability). Keeping a regular movement practice keeps my mind and body connected.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I’m excited for Authentic to come out in paperback later this year and can’t wait for more readers to engage with my debut! In the meantime, I’m working on new essays and allowing those to feed into my next book projects. I’m also continuing to build my reading series, Lit Lounge: The People’s Art! I love love love working on Lit Lounge and can’t wait until the next installation!

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Here’s the 189th installment, featuring , author most recently of Famesick: A Memoir, who writes the newsletter . - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Lena Dunham is a writer, director, actor and producer, living between London and the east coast. When she’s not on set or working with her colleagues at Good Things Going Productions she is watercoloring, reorganizing her books and throw pillows, trawling eBay or hanging out with her pigs, bunnies, cats and dogs. You will never catch her at a party unless she is required to go for work or someone is lording something over her. She writes the Substack newsletter .

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I’m going to be 40 in less than two months, and I’m thrilled because I’ve felt 40 since I was about 4. It’s nice to catch up with yourself.

I started writing as soon as I learned to read. I recently found my journal from kindergarten and man oh man, I had some feelings. I remember how free I felt knowing how to write, the way some people describe running or driving a car (two things I cannot do.)

I work with Girls Write Now because I want any girl with the inclination to have the experience that I did. It’s not about becoming a professional or knowing the “right” way—it’s about having the room of one’s own, even if it’s just in your head.

This book had to come out of me, which is how basically anything I do—whether it’s a film, a show, a book, a podcast or an article—makes its way into the world. It exerts force on me until I have to exorcise it. I started Famesick about 90 days into sobriety, and in April I’ll have 8 years. This book kept me company through it all and I will miss her.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

Famesick, coming out on April 14 🙂‍↔️.

What number book is this for you?

Book #2! My first book, Not That Kind of Girl, was published in 2014. Before Famesick, I actually wrote an entire book of short stories that I scrapped. It wasn’t the right medium and I was hiding inside of it and writing stiffly—writing is always pleasurable for me, and I love taking on a new genre, so the experience of actually writing them was wonderful.

But I realized that I had internalized all the chatter about my work (and, more importantly, the work of most female memoirists) because it was categorized as navel-gazing TMI. It was as if I was trying to prove I was a real writer and not just a diarist. The minute I realized that the stories were working and why, it was a massive relief and this book made itself apparent. But I needed to write that to get here, and I’m so lucky that my editor Andy Ward is a true friend and lets me take the roundabout to get to a solution that he probably thought of years prior but didn’t want to mansplain.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

The book is a memoir in the truest sense—it’s not essays, doesn’t have any experimental structure. I really wanted to write something that captured a ten-year swath of my life—ages 23 to 35, from when my career began until I got married in 2021—allowing the reader to feel both how much happens in that span and also how stuck we can remain in certain patterns or ideas about who we are.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

Famesick is about what happens when your creative ambitions take you places you never could have imagined, but wherever you go there you are, and the stuff you bury—physically, emotionally—will make itself known. There’s plenty of fun and nostalgia from my time being a young indie filmmaker and then shooting Girls, but it’s also about trauma, illness, sexuality, addiction—and through it all the drive to create. I really wanted to offer some cohesive ideas about illness and also about our cultural relationship to women and fame. Let me know if you think I succeeded. 🤪

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

This book had to come out of me, which is how basically anything I do—whether it’s a film, a show, a book, a podcast or an article—makes its way into the world. It exerts force on me until I have to exorcise it. I started Famesick about 90 days into sobriety, and in April I’ll have 8 years. This book kept me company through it all and I will miss her.

I started writing as a kid, and I was lucky enough to go to a school—Saint Ann’s, in Brooklyn—that valued writers and also respected that kids had something to say. My poetry teacher Marty Skoble, my playwriting teacher Nancy Fales Garrett and (oddly enough) my math teacher Barbara O’Rourke are the reason I’m a writer today.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

The hardest aspect of writing this book was sitting down on certain days to write or edit a scene that I’d spent a good amount of time suppressing so that it wouldn’t disrupt my daily life. I don’t hear a lot about ways that writing memoir can reignite certain feelings as if they were happening in the moment. But writing this stuff also acts as a sort of exposure therapy that I personally find incredibly valuable to integrating painful history into the present and continuing to move.

Before Famesick, I actually wrote an entire book of short stories that I scrapped. It wasn’t the right medium and I was hiding inside of it and writing stiffly—writing is always pleasurable for me, and I love taking on a new genre, so the experience of actually writing them was wonderful. But I realized that I had internalized all the chatter about my work (and, more importantly, the work of most female memoirists) because it was categorized as navel-gazing TMI. It was as if I was trying to prove I was a real writer and not just a diarist.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

This is always the hardest work a memoirist has to do—balancing honesty with the reality that it does effect people—people we love fiercely, or people we’ve loved in the past and who still occupy a very special status in our minds (a status that often means we are imagining what the might say or think about what we are choosing to share.) I have always felt a deep tug of war between the part of me that worries a great deal about other people and the part of me that is totally and utterly led by the work and what it’s asking for. It has created, at times, a deep tension that resulted in shame and guilt (emotions I am already predisposed to.)

But recently I’ve been more conscious that two things can be true at once—I can be full of love and concern and I can also feel confident that I didn’t write from a place of revenge, and that I made highly specific choices about what to include and what not to. Someone can dislike a portrayal even if it’s deeply loving, and sometimes people love a portrayal even though—or maybe because—it’s a bit thorny. Tone matters. Context matters. Intention and execution have to move forward, hand in hand.

As for sharing with people who are in the book, my first reader was my brother, followed by my parents, once my brother gave me some notes. My father said he’s traumatized (hehehe) from reading things no father should, and my mother gave me pages and pages of notes—all of which I took!

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

Tiger Tiger by Margaux Fragoso (may she rest in peace) was a huge inspiration. Our stories are not at all alike—unless you consider the ubiquity of sexual trauma a throughline—but the style she writes in is at once deeply present and confident and also very childlike. It really struck a chord with me. The word brave is overused these days, but she was brave.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

Someone out there is waiting for your story to come and save them. I really believe that. Some people think we all have one soulmate—I don’t believe that, but I do believe we have mirrors to our story and that writing attracts them.

On a logistical level, for people afraid to start—timed writing, setting a clock for a period you can bear and just removing the judgmental super ego—is deeply effective. You will find that whatever you have written is so much better than you were prepared for, and the editor in your head (or an actual editor!) can join the party later.

What do you love about writing?

Writing is total immersion—whether it’s a fictional universe or my own past, it takes me out of the anxiety of the day to day and I feel free. Sometimes when I watch people who really love to dance and they’re just smiling as they go—that’s how I feel about writing! Of course there are challenging and painful parts about everything, but for me it’s the safe and wide open space. I still can’t believe I get to do it for a job because I love it as much as when I was 8 and got my first desktop and started clacking away!

What frustrates you about writing?

It’s always challenging when you’re working on a project and the other people involved don’t share the vision. I can usually find a creatively exciting way to execute a note, but if the visions are too far apart and the work starts to feel baggy and unclear and…shitty? That makes me want to lay face down on a bath mat.

Also—post premature menopause (more on that in Famesick!) sometimes I can’t locate a word. I will lose my mind trying to locate a word!

What about writing surprises you?

Writing makes me feel like a continuous student—every single project requires something new from me. Sometimes it’s research into a world I don’t know about, sometimes it’s a genre that has new rules. But it’s always challenging, always expanding, always exciting.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I have always been a nighttime writer, but adulthood sometimes requires that you’re awake in the morning (I know, what a drag.) So I’ve had to find creative workarounds to give myself the same sensation—which is why you’ll often find me writing in bed with my morning green tea and smoothie, or curled up there in the afternoon doing edits.

The hardest aspect of writing this book was sitting down on certain days to write or edit a scene that I’d spent a good amount of time suppressing so that it wouldn’t disrupt my daily life. I don’t hear a lot about ways that writing memoir can reignite certain feelings as if they were happening in the moment. But writing this stuff also acts as a sort of exposure therapy that I personally find incredibly valuable to integrating painful history into the present and continuing to move.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

Hobbies (or jobbies as I like to call them, even though I’ve been informed that’s a Scottish term for #2) are the most wonderful part of being human! And they provide a gust of creative energy and curiosity that sails the writing ship. Mine include: watercolor painting, interior design (lots of dog eared Arch Digest issues by my bed), animal rescue (I’m obsessed with my pigs, don’t get me started.)

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

This one took a lot out of me, for obvious and less obvious reasons—but I know that the minute I’m back on a TV or film set a book will suddenly be quietly taunting me. I would love to take a break from memoir for a minute (like, until I’m 80?) and try my hand at fiction, although I am shy to say that because it’s a form that I have so much reverence for. But messing up forms we have reverence for is also pretty cool :)

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Readers,

During my eight years as the editorial director of a wonderful storytelling non-profit called TMI Project, I often had to come up with writing prompts for workshops I led. I had a knack for consistently coming up with a varied assortment that jogged people’s brains, eliciting productive writing (something I’d first developed as a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter of memoirs), and leading the executive director to nickname me “The Prompt-O-Matic.” I thought I’d repurpose that knack over here, in The Lit Lab, offering weekly prompts for paid subscribers. This is the 111th installment.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Your mind can latch onto a prompt very literally, or lead you toward something altogether different from the suggestion at hand. I’ve also found there are some writers for whom, no matter how they’re prompted, the same story emerges—a story that stubbornly won’t go away until it gets dumped onto the page. Sometimes it’s the story you need to write; other times, it’s the story you need to get out of your way before anything else can come through. Either way, being prompted helps move the writer forward.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Writing prompts can also help dissolve writers’ block, especially when you respond to them while racing against a timer. I know from experience; when I started at TMI Project, I myself had been blocked for some time. To encourage workshop participants, I figured I’d “take the workshop with them,” doing twenty-minute free-writes alongside them, using my own prompts. It instantly unblocked me, freeing me to write story after story.

Below the paywall is the 111th prompt in this series. Use it however you’d like to spark new writing, ***but please don’t share it with anyone else. I hope to someday publish a book of these. And I use them in my teaching.

My writing prompts are offered as a perk for those who pay to support my work. Thank you for your support! 🙏

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I invite those taking part in this to leave, in the comments, up to a paragraph of the writing the prompt has generated.

Here goes…

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Change is afoot at Electric Literature—an award-winning digital literary publication that, since 2009, has been publishing ground-breaking writing, fostering community, and supporting underserved writers as a nonprofit.

I’ve long admired Electric Literature’s work, its mission, and its staff, so I wanted to learn more about what’s in store for the publication in light of some big news.

In February, Executive Director Halimah Marcus announced her resignation, indicating she was passing her position on to Editor-in-Chief Denne Michele Norris, and that there’d be additional promotions—Managing Editor Wynter K. Miller would become Director of Operations and Fiction Editor; and Senior Editor Katie Henken Robinson would become Deputy Editor.

Eager to know more about this changing of the guard, I invited Marcus and Norris for an interview over Zoom. You can find the video from our chat up above. ⬆️

Marcus has been at Electric Literature since 2010, a year after its founding, beginning as an intern. In 2012 she relaunched the publication as a nonprofit, brought it fully online, and co-founded Recommended Reading, the publication’s weekly fiction series—which just published its 721st issue, and of which she is the editor. She held various titles before becoming the organization’s founding Executive Director in 2016.

She’ll stay on at Electric Literature until May 31, and will consult with the publication part-time through June. Marcus also recently sold her debut novel, Slush, to Pamela Dorman Books. It’s expected in 2027. Previously she edited the 2021 anthology Horse Girls for Harper Perenial.

Norris—who last year edited the Electric Litearture anthology Both/And, and published her debut novel, When the Harvest Comes—joined the publication as editor-in-chief in 2021, becoming the first Black, openly trans woman to helm a major literary magazine. On June 1st she’ll become Executive Director and Publisher.

It was great talking with these two literary power houses about the good work they’ve done, and their vision going forward. I appreciate their contributions each week to the “Memoir Monday” essay/workshop/calls for submission newsletters. (Other partner publications: LitHub, Granta, Narratively, The Rumpus, Guernica, Orion, The Walrus, and )

I hope you enjoy the interview! -

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Here’s the 188th installment, featuring , author most recently of Hitler and My Mother-in-Law: A Memoir. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Terese Svoboda has published books of poetry, novels, story collections, memoir, biography and translation. Her opera WET premiered at Disney’s RedCat theater. She lives part of the year in Victoria BC and the rest in NYC. Her website is here, and her substack here.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

75. I completed my first book about a prince and a princess at age 8. It was spiralbound.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

Hitler and My Mother-in-Law, December 2, 2025.

What number book is this for you?

24.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

Memoir. Some have said it’s a double memoir, about myself and my mother-in-law, but its real subject and what unites it, is truth—in family, journalism and politics. I include my life for a contemporary perspective, and to let readers understand what I think is truth. Memoir, after all, purports to be true, and what I’m trying to do is best understood by the title of my interview with Christa Lei: Memoir, Reinvented. I had another wonderful interview about truth at Bibliocracy. The book has sixty-six pages of footnotes. Does that make it a new genre?

My brothers-in-law were always poo-pooing their mother’s war stories, comparing, for example, all the different versions of her dancing with Goering and how she came upon his medals—my husband included. Then her journalist son decided he wasn’t going to write a book about her after all. Not to mention being inspired by the soaring number of our Pinocchio President’s astonishing untruths. Once I thought up the title, I had to write the book.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

“Threaded with dark humor and personal reflection, Hitler and My Mother-in-Law explores the stories we inherit and the ones we invent, the official histories we parrot, and the quiet manipulations we accept. From Cold War propaganda and McCarthy-era paranoia to newsroom sexism and the strange theater of postwar art-world politics, Svoboda reveals a life extraordinary—and perhaps crafted.”

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

In the 60s everyone was an artist. In the 70s everyone had become lawyers and doctors but I was still trying to be an artist, especially in media. At least that’s what I thought happened until going through a box of juvenilia, I found a notebook entitled “My Anthology.” Apparently, Louis Untermeyer was a big influence.

About this book’s becoming, my brothers-in-law were always poo-pooing their mother’s war stories, comparing, for example, all the different versions of her dancing with Goering and how she came upon his medals—my husband included. Then her journalist son decided he wasn’t going to write a book about her after all. Not to mention being inspired by the soaring number of our Pinocchio President’s astonishing untruths. Once I thought up the title, I had to write the book.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

The first press wanted to change the title. I moved on. About the writing, I tried to be cautious about family sensitivities although I needn’t have bothered, because her sons —except for my husband—refuse to read it.

“Threaded with dark humor and personal reflection, Hitler and My Mother-in-Law explores the stories we inherit and the ones we invent, the official histories we parrot, and the quiet manipulations we accept. From Cold War propaganda and McCarthy-era paranoia to newsroom sexism and the strange theater of postwar art-world politics, Svoboda reveals a life extraordinary—and perhaps crafted.”

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

Although I was careful to acknowledge the existence of my mother-in-law’s sons for narrative reasons, I did not elaborate. I am very beholden to the journalist brother who had shared many of her letters until the other brothers forbade him to share more. I did not show the book to any of them. I did send the journalist brother a link to a Slate article about my mother-in-law’s purported polio and received so many equivocations that I felt I was justified in not sharing the whole book. After all, it was “my” mother-in-law, not their mother.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

Poppy by Australian Drusilla Modjeska, a fictional biography of her mother in 1950s and 60s England. The non-events of the subject remembered showed me that every life can have shape and meaning.

And really, my first memoir, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, at least in form. Short scenes with the structure of a lyric poem that allowed me to gracefully include prosaic excerpts as well as interview material. Once a poet, always a poet.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

Enjoy researching and interviewing and reminiscing. Keep track of the material chronologically because what happens in congruence is often quite revealing.

What do you love about writing?

It opens a door to what I’m thinking. Otherwise, I’m dumb.

What frustrates you about writing?

Publicity.

What about writing surprises you?

How hard it continues to be. You’d think after nearly sixty years of use and abuse, the sentences would flow.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I write often.

Although I was careful to acknowledge the existence of my mother-in-law’s sons for narrative reasons, I did not elaborate. I am very beholden to the journalist brother who had shared many of her letters until the other brothers forbade him to share more. I did not show the book to any of them. I did send the journalist brother a link to a Slate article about my mother-in-law’s purported polio and received so many equivocations that I felt I was justified in not sharing the whole book.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I cook. One has to eat.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I have three or four novels awaiting homes, at least one book of stories, two books of poetry and one strange collection of prose poems about Negritude and Surrealism based on a piece I did for Guernica.

I try to remind anyone interested that dead authors don’t go on tour, please consider me even though you’d rather launch a new young thing. My 98 year old friend Betty Fussell had a great review in December in the NY Times for her excellent How to Cook a Coyote: The Joy of Old Age and although she’s blind, she’s working on a murder mystery. There’s hope.

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Here’s the 187th installment, featuring Deadwiler, author of Daddy’s Little Stranger: A Memoir. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Acamea Deadwiler is the author of the memoir Daddy’s Little Stranger, which has been featured by Literary Hub, The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, and deemed “arresting” by The BookLife Prize. Her writing has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, North American Review, and elsewhere. Acamea holds an MFA from Randolph College, where she was selected as a Blackburn Fellow. She teaches creative writing at East-West University in Chicago. Find her at her website, or on Instagram at @acamea.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I’m 45 and have been writing professionally since my first assignment, covering the Chicago Bulls for Yahoo Sports in 2010.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

Daddy’s Little Stranger: a Memoir (2024)

What number book is this for you?

This is my first traditionally published book.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

I categorize Daddy’s Little Stranger as a memoir because it revolves around a single theme from my early life, growing up without a father.

For most of my life, I thought growing up without a father hadn’t affected me at all. As I became more adept and honest in examining myself, this lie was harder to believe. Much goes into the makeup of who we are, but I recognized how the single event of waiting by a window for my father to pick me up one day set me on a particular course. So, I wrote essays about this and connected experiences.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

“Devastated by sudden disconnection from the man she knew as her father, and the rejection from her birth father that followed, a young girl aims to escape a lonesome path disturbed by the chaos of mental illness, poverty, and violence as she grows into a woman.”

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

I played basketball in college with the belief that my academic major was irrelevant because I was going to the WNBA. When that didn’t happen, I had to find something else I might enjoy doing for a living and settled on sports writing as it combined two of my passions. I’d always been a voracious reader. The idea of trying my hand at the other side, creating stories, excited me. Writing was the only thing I did that gave me a sense of fulfillment that rivaled what I felt when playing basketball.

After a few years of covering the NBA for outlets such as Yahoo and SLAM the Magazine, I branched out into other topics. This included lifestyle and wellbeing articles for sites like mindbodygreen, as well as what would become my North Star, memoir. I discovered that creative writing resonated with me more deeply than structured journalism. Writing about my life experiences helped me process events in ways I never had. I also enjoyed the challenge of sharing a personal story in a manner that made it engaging to readers who did not know me. Once I started hearing back from those readers about how something I’d written made them feel seen or helped them in some way, I was hooked. Memoir became my ministry.

Daddy’s Little Stranger was initially an essay collection that came about as I dug deeper into my early life and how it shaped me into this adult. I wanted to better understand myself so I could grow, as a friend, as a partner, and as simply a person on that universal quest for happiness. For most of my life, I thought growing up without a father hadn’t affected me at all. As I became more adept and honest in examining myself, this lie was harder to believe. Much goes into the makeup of who we are, but I recognized how the single event of waiting by a window for my father to pick me up one day set me on a particular course. So, I wrote essays about this and connected experiences.

It was my publisher who pointed out the through line of tainted love and recommended turning the essay collection into a memoir. I resisted initially, mostly because it seemed like a daunting task after I’d already written and revised a full manuscript. However, after reading it with the awareness afforded to me by this recommendation, I could see that the publisher was right. I think I may have written the story as essays to compartmentalize. So I wouldn’t have to sit with my feelings as long as you must to pull an emotional thread through an entire book. Deconstructing the essay collection and rebuilding it into a memoir was the best kind of hard work. It was cathartic and revelatory and healing. It was transformative.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

The hardest aspect of writing this book, aside from turning the essay collection into a memoir, was being honest with myself about how I felt. Although I’d written a bunch of memoirs and essays, I was always a selective sharer who focused more on story than interiority. I have never felt more exposed and vulnerable than I did writing Daddy’s Little Stranger.

The most challenging aspect of getting it published was figuring out how to package the idea in a way that made it compelling to industry professionals. I was unagented and went the indie press submission route, so that responsibility fell on me. My corporate career was in marketing, yet I was never great at pitching or selling myself. It’s like my skills don’t always translate when I try to apply them to myself or my work. Maybe I’m too close to it? It took several attempts for me to craft a pitch and synopsis I felt did the book justice.

After the deal, not having full creative control was an adjustment. I was fortunate to work with an editor and publisher who deferred to me when I felt strongly about something. Though there were elements of shared creative control that I enjoyed, it was still a big change for someone who’d self-published in the past.

It was my publisher who pointed out the through line of tainted love and recommended turning the essay collection into a memoir. I resisted initially, mostly because it seemed like a daunting task after I’d already written and revised a full manuscript. However, after reading it with the awareness afforded to me by this recommendation, I could see that the publisher was right. I think I may have written the story as essays to compartmentalize.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

I changed the names of everyone in the book except my friends, because I didn’t include any sensitive or deeply personal information about them. I try to be mindful of sharing other people’s “business” and do so only to the extent it intertwines with my story. In cases where someone might be easy to find, broke the law, or something like that, I obscured identifying details.

I did not run Daddy’s Little Stranger by anyone. I was more concerned with protecting people’s privacy than getting everyone’s blessing or even preserving relationships, especially those already strained. For instance, with my biological father, I only use the nickname given to him by his mother. A Google search on the name wouldn’t return any useful results. I didn’t want anyone to be able to find him but had no qualms about sharing what I found and remembered. I did get permission from a friend to include a conversation we had about how growing up with her father added distinct value to her life. So I guess I ran a small section of it by one person. I may have approached this differently if my real-life relationships with characters were different.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

One writer I took inspiration from in producing this book, and developing my writing style in general, is Tracy K. Smith. She was my very first literary muse. I was mesmerized by the way she wrote about a set of bookshelves in her memoir, Ordinary Light. It’s been quite some time since I read it, and I’m hesitant to read it again now because I don’t want to interfere with that initial magic. Almost a decade later, I still remember how she gave this inanimate object meaning and wrote about it for a couple of pages without it seeming detached from the story. She did it in a way that was engaging. Since my father wasn’t in my life, I had to find creative ways to keep him a part of the story and fill gaps between his appearances. The way Smith made that bookshelf a character is what I aimed to do with descriptions of place, setting, and even a few objects, such as a pair of pink Reeboks. This helped me make the story more vivid than it would have been if relying solely on action to move it along.

I also took inspiration from Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden. It was fascinating to me the way her father kind of hovered throughout the story. And again, I had to get creative with an absent main character.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

I would ask, first, if they feel the story is ready to be told. I think that apprehension can dissipate a bit once we feel prepared and have a clear vision for how we can tell the story in a way that supports our wellbeing. When you get to a point where you can’t not tell the story, it almost bursts out of you, overpowering any trepidation.

If the fear isn’t related to reception but setting out on the journey itself, I would say the only way to conquer a fear is to face it. Writing a book is definitely a process that can feel intimidating as the finish line seems so far away when you get started. You have to find some satisfaction in the process. My suggestion would be to break it down into smaller parts. Set a daily or weekly word count goal. If you write 1000 words a week, you’ll have 52,000 by the end of the year. The hardest part is getting started. Once you get into a groove, things tend to pick up.

If the task continues to feel extremely arduous, again it could be that the story isn’t ready or you’re not ready to tell it. That’s okay too. Try writing about something else while the idea for your memoir gestates.

What do you love about writing?

Getting into flow state. When I can just sit for hours and the words come to and through me, effortlessly, I feel invincible. No matter what else happens that day, the day is perfect.

What frustrates you about writing?

The revision process. I want to say I would gladly hand this chore over to someone else, but I remember noting a comma that had been removed from my manuscript because I was adamant that it changed the meaning of the sentence. So, I don’t think that would ever be possible. But this is the phase where it’s most difficult for me to focus. It’s so tedious compared to the flow of writing. Although, my work ALWAYS gets better with each revision. Necessary evil, I suppose.

What about writing surprises you?

The way it works while you’re not actively writing. You can go from having no idea what direction to take with a story to it suddenly all coming together. Like, you can just wake up or take a shower, and the answer will come to you seemingly out of nowhere.

The hardest aspect of writing this book, aside from turning the essay collection into a memoir, was being honest with myself about how I felt. Although I’d written a bunch of memoirs and essays, I was always a selective sharer who focused more on story than interiority. I have never felt more exposed and vulnerable than I did writing Daddy’s Little Stranger.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I like to sit outside when possible, or near a window when it’s not. I need a hot tea or coffee as I’ve convinced myself I write better with caffeine and find the warmth soothing, even in summer. I’m a mid-morning writer—most productive once I’ve meditated, gotten into a few yoga poses, scribbled some morning pages and eaten breakfast. I also write really well on airplanes. I would be interested to see the results if I could take a quick flight every designated writing day.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

Having worked in digital marketing, I got proficient at video editing. That’s something I enjoy and used to do a lot for myself. Not so much now as platforms have changed in a way that makes me less interested, and because I’ve just naturally kind of burned out on it. But I’ll still spend some time creating an event recap video with smooth transitions and a song I love playing in the background every now and then.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I’ve actually drafted a novel. After almost two decades of writing nonfiction exclusively, I’m excited to explore different genres. Fiction writing has been so freeing. I don’t have to interrogate my memories or work to lessen the weight of a burden being transferred to the page. Mostly it’s just nice to not be writing about myself. (Not overtly, anyway.) I’m having so much fun making stuff up.

I’m not completely abandoning my roots though. I’ve also drafted an essay collection. Perhaps this one will stay that way.

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Readers,

During my eight years as the editorial director of a wonderful storytelling non-profit called TMI Project, I often had to come up with writing prompts for workshops I led. I had a knack for consistently coming up with a varied assortment that jogged people’s brains, eliciting productive writing (something I’d first developed as a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter of memoirs), and leading the executive director to nickname me “The Prompt-O-Matic.” I thought I’d repurpose that knack over here, in The Lit Lab, offering weekly prompts for paid subscribers. This is the 110th installment.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Your mind can latch onto a prompt very literally, or lead you toward something altogether different from the suggestion at hand. I’ve also found there are some writers for whom, no matter how they’re prompted, the same story emerges—a story that stubbornly won’t go away until it gets dumped onto the page. Sometimes it’s the story you need to write; other times, it’s the story you need to get out of your way before anything else can come through. Either way, being prompted helps move the writer forward.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Writing prompts can also help dissolve writers’ block, especially when you respond to them while racing against a timer. I know from experience; when I started at TMI Project, I myself had been blocked for some time. To encourage workshop participants, I figured I’d “take the workshop with them,” doing twenty-minute free-writes alongside them, using my own prompts. It instantly unblocked me, freeing me to write story after story.

Below the paywall is the 110th prompt in this series. Use it however you’d like to spark new writing, ***but please don’t share it with anyone else. I hope to someday publish a book of these. And I use them in my teaching.

My writing prompts are offered as a perk for those who pay to support my work. Thank you for your support! 🙏

Subscribe now

I invite those taking part in this to leave, in the comments, up to a paragraph of the writing the prompt has generated.

Here goes…

Read more

Here’s the 186th installment, featuring Nicole Walker, author most recently of How to Plant a Billion Trees: A Memoir of Childhood Trauma and the Healing Power of Nature. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Subscribe now

NICOLE WALKER is the author of the memoir How to Plant a Billion Trees and craft book Writing the Hard Stuff, as well as Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh and Navigating Disaster, The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet, Sustainability: A Love Story, Where the Tiny Things Are, Egg, Micrograms, Quench Your Thirst with Salt and This Noisy Egg. You can find her on Facebook, BlueSky, and her website.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

54. I’ve been writing since I was 9 years old and wrote for a “Reflections” contest. I also submitted artwork and a piano composition. I won in no category. I did not become a visual artist or a composer. It was after college when I shared a bit of a novel with my good friend Misty and she said, “I think you’re going to be a real writer,” that I really thought a career as a writer might be possible. Positive affirmation helps.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

How to Plant a Billion Trees: Childhood Trauma and the Healing Power of Nature, Feb 19 2026.

I also recently published Writing the Hard Stuff: Turning Difficult Subjects into Meaningful Prose on November 27, 2025. The latter book describes some of the thinking and processes behind writing How to Plant a Billion Trees, plus offers ideas about form and writing prompts to help people write about hard things.

What number book is this for you?

Nine, unless you count the anthologies Bending Genre and The Science of Story. Then 11.

How is a young girl’s sexual trauma like a burnt down forest? At first, everything seems ashen, broken, and ghostly. But then, thanks to the effort and energy, in the form of heartwood in the case of the forest and in the form of family, therapy, and friends in the case of the young girl, new sprouts begin to form. The network of the ecosystem, the surviving fungal networks under the duff, rebuilds the life that once seem completely destroyed.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

I’m an essayist first, so each of the ‘chapters’ stands alone. But I wrote this memoir-in-essays differently than I wrote my other collections of essays. I had a direction I wanted to go, and therefore, a kind of arc, which gives the whole book a feeling of narrative cohesion. I hope.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

How is a young girl’s sexual trauma like a burnt down forest? At first, everything seems ashen, broken, and ghostly. But then, thanks to the effort and energy, in the form of heartwood in the case of the forest and in the form of family, therapy, and friends in the case of the young girl, new sprouts begin to form. The network of the ecosystem, the surviving fungal networks under the duff, rebuilds the life that once seem completely destroyed.

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

An early draft of this book centered around trees and school choice. My argument was that public schools provide not only the model but the physical space for community networks. From dropping kids off at school, to Navajo dances, from holiday bazaars to offering shelter to those evacuated from fire, public schools knit communities together. It distresses me that the hallmark of individualism in the US has led to people pulling kids out of school because their individual needs and desires trump this larger premise of community building. Likewise, trees are not stand-alone majestical creatures. They rely on microbes, fungal networks call mycelia, wildlife, snags, and fallen logs that nurse these other creatures to grow to such heights.

Although the underlying point about school choice never goes away, the direction of How to Plant a Billion Trees changed. In 2024, I traveled across the country to do interviews and presentations about reproductive freedom, mainly because of the essay I wrote, “My Abortion at Age 11 Wasn’t a Choice, It Was My Life.” I worked with Free & Just in DC, the Yes on 4 campaign in Florida, and the Prop 139 campaign in Arizona. News media interviewed me often about abortion rights, but then, when Trump was elected, other issues became priorities and the interviews stopped and the protests began.

The scope of the book widened but the focus turned personal. I had written obliquely about my molestation, but never blatantly. I knew after my New York Times essay came out that I had to be blatant and certain. I could not be ashamed or silenced. So I dug in and wrote how after the molestation and the abortion, I became outcast. And then I became subservient to boys who I thought could protect me. And then, after a decade or so, started to understand that relying on a single individual could not knit me back into the fabric of the world. Instead, I had to open up, like the tiny threads at the ends of a tree’s roots that reach for the nutrient-providing mycelia, and tell my story and let people in.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

I relied on Donna Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble as a guide for how to conceive this book. She writes a lot about webs, connections, cat’s cradle, and other networks of narrative that differ from a traditional arc. To write a book that draws so much on metaphor and how forms from nature mirror psychic and communal networks is a risk. But Haraway also, as the title notes, argues that we have to stay with the trouble, especially about things like the climate crisis, if we are going to change our minds, our behavior, and our policies. To me, staying with the trouble meant sitting with that as well as staying with the difficult emotions and thoughts about the molestation. I wrote using the forms I mention in Writing the Hard Stuff, but one of the primary ones was using speculative nonfiction to re-see some of those really terrible moments of the molestation in a different way so I could stay in the moment and convey it to readers in ways I don’t think I could have, straight on.

As for publishing, I am so lucky I found my agent, Malaga Baldi, who in her letters to publishers wrote, “This is the best book.” The first days on submission last year were rough. We received one near-offer from a Big 5 press, but the marketing team worried I didn’t have a big enough following. 100,000 followers, they expected. Now, this doesn’t mean that everyone needs 100,000 followers. I think it means that for a book that pairs the story of childhood sexual trauma with the story of the forest, you’re going to need a lot of people who are already convinced about your writing and promotion abilities. We had a few other offers but Bloomsbury offered the best deal. Rowman and Littlefield Books had just been acquired by Bloomsbury and their editor, Richard Brown, had just begun acquiring books under the new auspices. Bloomsbury could support the book in great ways because of its transatlantic reach, its publicity and marketing arms, and its broad distribution.

I’m an essayist first, so each of the ‘chapters’ stands alone. But I wrote this memoir-in-essays differently than I wrote my other collections of essays. I had a direction I wanted to go, and therefore, a kind of arc, which gives the whole book a feeling of narrative cohesion. I hope.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

I did change names, for the first time in any of my books! I didn’t name the child molester. I called him “the babysitter,” which helps convey the power dynamic and the age difference. I changed my boyfriends’ names because in this narrative, I’m working out ideas about them that none of us would have recognized at the time. That I hoped that each boyfriend would protect me, would be that single, savior tree condensed a lot of our relationship and their personhood into pointed motifs. Their real selves are much more complex so I thought to bind that complexity to their real names and the invented names to the metaphorical work they do in the book.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

I read Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams in my teens. I read it again when I was 37. Her book has become such a mainstay for nature-writing that I think it’s easy to forget how surprising the narrative structure was. Williams toggled, chapter by chapter, between her mother’s cancer and the birds of the Bear Lake Bird Refuge. I can trace almost as if with my fingers the imprint that book left on my mind. I understood from Williams that you don’t have to tell a story in one narrative go. And your body is as important as the world. And the world is as important as your body. After my essay was published in the New York Times, she sent me the kindest note about how telling my story matters. Again, positive affirmation helps!

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

It is exciting, and daunting, how many presses are out there. I am the series editor for Crux, University of Georgia’s nonfiction series. We receive 250 manuscripts a year and so many of them are so good. We can’t publish them all, but I do believe there is a press for nearly all of them. Presses have unique aesthetics and varied aspirations.

Check out where your favorite authors publish. Go to the bookfair at AWP and see all the amazing, stylish, beautiful books. It is a joy that there are so many writers and so many publishers in the world. My single bit of advice is to take joy into the process. Enjoy reading independent and small press books. Enjoy emailing editors to tell them about your book. Enjoy the writing itself. Books, even sad ones, bring joy to our worlds because each one strives to connect with a reader. That striving for connection is the best thing about humans, and books are a joyful representation of it.

What do you love about writing?

Even more than publishing, writing brings me so much joy. Making mental connections is almost as fun as making writer-reader ones. Sentences are puzzles, but the puzzling is even harder, because you don’t have a reference picture to guide the placement of your pieces. Maybe it’s more like spelunking. “I’m going in to see what I can discover.” Words and sentences are the flashlight. Perhaps, what I truly love is making metaphors.

What frustrates you about writing?

I actually love revising, now that I see it as an equally creative activity to writing. After you’ve written a draft, you have a vision of what that puzzle is supposed to look like. You have to create new parts of the puzzle to make it align with that vision. But I hate it when I reread to revise and see that I’ve used the same word four times in one paragraph or written a sentence that doesn’t make sense. It makes me feel dumb. But I try to remember that most everything can be fixed. I try to take that as a life lesson too.

What about writing surprises you?

Perhaps my answer here is an extension of the question about what do I love about writing. I love the surprises in writing. I am surprised when the perfect image lands on the page. I am surprised when the parallel structure of a sentence helps me see the larger purpose of the essay. I am surprised that I can write for hours on end and not realize how much time has gone by. I’m surprised by how puzzled I am by our country’s cruel policies politics and people’s lack of empathy and yet, through writing, I can see a way through or out or a better thing. Writing means staying with the trouble, yet, as you stay there, something about putting letter after letter helps you find a way out of that trouble.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I try to write 500 words a day. Usually between 11 and 1 on days I don’t teach. I sit in my living room where there is a lot of light, fold my legs under my body, and try to focus on typing. I am notorious for dipping out to check the FB, but usually I do it to give my brain time to churn. When I come back to the page, I can usually finish that sentence I had been stuck on.

It’s been a strange year for writing because a lot of my writing time has been devoted into working on getting A Billion Trees into people’s hands, but I still try to keep moving forward on other projects.

I did change names, for the first time in any of my books! I didn’t name the child molester. I called him “the babysitter,” which helps convey the power dynamic and the age difference. I changed my boyfriends’ names because in this narrative, I’m working out ideas about them that none of us would have recognized at the time.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I have way too many pets: two dogs and three cats. And way too many plants (see well-lit living room above). I run half-assedly in the forest behind my house, which is why I’m always talking about trees. I like to cook. I also spend a lot of time writing postcards, going to rallies, calling my senators. That is hobby I wish I didn’t have to do.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I have a novel my agent is going to send out next week called Daylight Savings Time about a wildlife photographer who is so focused on her job, she lets her newborn baby get bitten by a lynx. After her husband takes the baby away, she lapses into decadent behavior until she forms an unlikely relationship with a lost boy. She becomes entangled in fights over uranium, water, and land, getting into more trouble until she figures out where she belongs in these fights.

I’m also working on a book to be published by West Virginia University Press in 2027 called Shapeshifters of the Inland Seas about how humans affect water bodies in the west, and how water affects our and other species’ bodies in return.

Thank you, Sari, for this opportunity!

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Here’s the 185th installment, featuring magazine legend Tom Junod, who has just debuted as an author with the memoir In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What it Means to Be a Man. - Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Subscribe now

In his career as a writer for GQ, Esquire and now ESPN, Tom Junod has won two National Magazine Awards, an Emmy, a James Beard Award, and the Jenkins Medal for Sportswriting. But he is proudest of writing stories that people have kept reading many years after publication, such as his 9/11 story The Falling Man and his profile of Fred Rogers, which served as the basis of A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks. His first book, a memoir about his father entitled In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man, was published on March 10.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I’m 67, and I guess I began writing when I was 20 and starting keeping a journal. I’ve had a long career as a writer for magazines and now as the author of a memoir but I’ve never stopped writing in my journal. I hope I never do.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man, was published March 10, 2026.

What number book is this for you?

It is my first.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

My book is a memoir. I worked hard to make it such—to make it experiential rather than analytical, to put the reader in the presence of my characters instead writing about them from a distance. I want readers not just to know but to feel them and don’t think my family can be understood without that first-hand intimacy.

I set off on a quest not just to find out about my father’s life but also to fix some of the broken parts of his legacy. It took me nine years to research and write, but In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man starts as a memoir and grows into a detective story, in which nothing less than my entire conception of my family and of manhood is at stake. I took a big risk and I found what I was looking for. And who, in the end, told me what It means to be a man? The women who told me the truth about Lou Junod.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

I have entitled my book In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man because in the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man by my father, Lou Junod, who thought he knew. “Learn my secrets,” he told me, meaning the knowledge he had acquired over the years about hygiene (”Make sure you clean your navel”), wearing clothes (”the turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear”), and attitude (”If you’re going to be a bear, be a Grizzly”).

But from a very young age, I knew that there were other kinds of secrets, the kind nobody talked about. I set about trying to figure them out for nearly as long as I can remember, and when a woman who was not my mother stood up at my father’s funeral and said, “Can we all just agree that this was...a man,” I decided to answer her question. I set off on a quest not just to find out about my father’s life but also to fix some of the broken parts of his legacy. It took me nine years to research and write, but In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man starts as a memoir and grows into a detective story, in which nothing less than my entire conception of my family and of manhood is at stake. I took a big risk and I found what I was looking for. And who, in the end, told me what It means to be a man? The women who told me the truth about Lou Junod.

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

When I graduated college, I followed in my father’s footsteps as a handbag salesman. When I was nearly killed in a hotel room holdup, I changed the course of my life and began writing. I wrote about my father several times, for GQ, Esquire and ESPN. But I never dared reveal the secrets I had been trying to understand since I was a boy, so I never wrote the book I promised myself to write long before I even knew what writing was. Now I have, and there is no doubt in my mind that this is not only the book I was born to write—it’s the book I became a writer to write.

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

I was a very successful magazine writer in the 1990s and early 2000s—so successful in fact that I signed a contract to write whatever book I wanted to write, with no deadline and no subject. Sounds great—but it became a terrible burden, because it gave me too much freedom. Years and years went by. Then in 2015, I finally spoke to the woman who spoke at my father’s funeral and the conversation changed everything. I knew the book I wanted to write, had to write. It took me a long time, because I had to figure out my father’s secrets once and for all. But I did it, and after nearly nine years of slow toil I wrote the last third of the book in six months.

I have entitled my book In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man because in the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man by my father, Lou Junod, who thought he knew. “Learn my secrets,” he told me, meaning the knowledge he had acquired over the years about hygiene (”Make sure you clean your navel”), wearing clothes (”the turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear”), and attitude (”If you’re going to be a bear, be a Grizzly”).

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

I struggled to give myself permission to write this book so I did not ask for permission from the people I wrote about. Many had died. But I did not run passages by the living, nor make any changes. I did change a few names, mostly of the people I hadn’t seen in decades and were denizens of the distant past.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

I am lucky to have come of age as a writer in the golden age of memoir. Frank McCourt, Mary Karr, the Wolff brothers, Suzannah Lessard, James Ellroy, Natasha Trethewey, Jesmyn Ward, JR Moehringer, Jeannette Walls, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Kathryn Harrison...well, the list just goes on and on, each of these writers proof of larger possibility. I am particularly indebted to Michael Hainey and his memoir After Visiting Friends: A Son’s Story.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

If you write every day, you can afford to be patient. And patience is at heart of many memoirs, including mine. It took me nine years to write my book. But if I had finished the book after two, four, six or even eight years, it would have been, quite simply, wrong. I really believe I finished the book when I was meant to finish it. But you can only believe that if you write every day.

What do you love about writing?

It’s not just a way making a living; it’s a way of living, of engaging with the world.

What frustrates you about writing?

It’s never done. Though that’s also the magic and the mystery.

What about writing surprises you?

How the hard work of shaping a sentence for sound reveals its meaning. When I write, I usually feel pretty dumb until I find a rhythm or a sentence surprises me by seeming to know more than I do. Then I feel pretty smart. But it’s the sentence that has the brains.

When I graduated college, I followed in my father’s footsteps as a handbag salesman. When I was nearly killed in a hotel room holdup, I changed the course of my life and began writing. I wrote about my father several times, for GQ, Esquire and ESPN. But I never dared reveal the secrets I had been trying to understand since I was a boy, so I never wrote the book I promised myself to write long before I even knew what writing was. Now I have, and there is no doubt in my mind that this is not only the book I was born to write—it’s the book I became a writer to write.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?

I try to write every day, even when I’m not facing a deadline. I will try to write a little bit tonight even after I finish this questionnaire.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I sing, not particularly well. But it serves as a constantly shifting goal. I also sang with and wrote songs for a band, Cousin Billy.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I’ll tell you when I tell my publisher.

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

Readers,

During my eight years as the editorial director of a wonderful storytelling non-profit called TMI Project, I often had to come up with writing prompts for workshops I led. I had a knack for consistently coming up with a varied assortment that jogged people’s brains, eliciting productive writing (something I’d first developed as a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter of memoirs), and leading the executive director to nickname me “The Prompt-O-Matic.” I thought I’d repurpose that knack over here, in The Lit Lab, offering weekly prompts for paid subscribers. This is the 109th installment.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Your mind can latch onto a prompt very literally, or lead you toward something altogether different from the suggestion at hand. I’ve also found there are some writers for whom, no matter how they’re prompted, the same story emerges—a story that stubbornly won’t go away until it gets dumped onto the page. Sometimes it’s the story you need to write; other times, it’s the story you need to get out of your way before anything else can come through. Either way, being prompted helps move the writer forward.

I love a good prompt. It can awaken your brain to all kinds of possibilities, some that had already been lingering right under the surface of your consciousness, just waiting for a nudge, others seemingly out of the blue.

Writing prompts can also help dissolve writers’ block, especially when you respond to them while racing against a timer. I know from experience; when I started at TMI Project, I myself had been blocked for some time. To encourage workshop participants, I figured I’d “take the workshop with them,” doing twenty-minute free-writes alongside them, using my own prompts. It instantly unblocked me, freeing me to write story after story.

Below the paywall is the 109th prompt in this series. Use it however you’d like to spark new writing, ***but please don’t share it with anyone else. I hope to someday publish a book of these. And I use them in my teaching.

My writing prompts are offered as a perk for those who pay to support my work. Thank you for your support! 🙏

Subscribe now

I invite those taking part in this to leave, in the comments, up to a paragraph of the writing the prompt has generated.

Here goes…

Read more