Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 131st installment, featuring Karen Palmer, author of She’s Under Here: A Memoir. - Sari Botton
P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.
Karen Palmer’s memoir She's Under Here grew out of her award-winning essay The Reader Is the Protagonist, first published in Virginia Quarterly Review and selected by Leslie Jamison for inclusion in Best American Essays 2017. She is the author of the novels All Saints and Border Dogs and has received a Pushcart Prize and grants from the NEA and the Colorado Council on the Arts. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Kenyon Review, Arts & Letters, and Kalliope, among others; a short story, Birds of Paradise, won the 2022 Emily Clark Balch Prize for Fiction. She teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, CO, and lives with her husband in California.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I’m 68, and I’ve been writing since I could read, though there have been very long stretches where I’ve read a lot but written nothing.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
She’s Under Here will be out from Algonquin Books on September 16, 2025.
What number book is this for you?
This will be my third.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
There are a few places in She’s Under Here that are reported, bringing in outside stories relevant to what’s happening in a given chapter, but overall this is a straight-up memoir about having changed my identity to escape my dangerous ex-husband and the consequences that ensued.
She’s Under Here examines the complicated choices of a woman with no good options, exploring lines between victim and perpetrator, desire and regret, and how living under a false identity ultimately allowed me to find myself.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
In 1989 my second husband and I quit our jobs without notice. We pulled my two young daughters out of school and buckled them into the backseat of a used car purchased with cash. The trunk was packed with clothing and toys, pillows and blankets, four place settings, one pot, one pan, and a sack that contained every penny we had. Living with the fear of my ex-husband had become untenable: This was DIY witness protection. She’s Under Here examines the complicated choices of a woman with no good options, exploring lines between victim and perpetrator, desire and regret, and how living under a false identity ultimately allowed me to find myself.
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 a kid my mom used to bring me every week to the Cahuenga Branch of the LA Public Library, where we took out the maximum number of books. It made me a reader. After school I’d sit at the dining-room table and put together little pamphlets, then pester my parents to look at them. As a teenager I dabbled in poetry. But I always wanted to write a novel. I didn’t get there until after our family landed in Boulder, CO, when I was in my thirties. The memoir came about because I’d had this extraordinary thing happen to me, where virtually overnight I became someone else. I knew there was a story in it. I wanted to answer an urgent question: How do you know who you are?
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
It took years to get enough distance from events that I could stand to look at them, and to write with curiosity and honesty, and then more years to figure out how to tell it. Finding a publisher was a nerve-wracking experience. I advise students to be patient, that their work just has to land on the right desk at the right time, but it was hard to do that myself.
In 1989 my second husband and I quit our jobs without notice. We pulled my two young daughters out of school and buckled them into the backseat of a used car purchased with cash. The trunk was packed with clothing and toys, pillows and blankets, four place settings, one pot, one pan, and a sack that contained every penny we had. Living with the fear of my ex-husband had become untenable: This was DIY witness protection.
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?
If you publish a memoir later in life, it can happen that some of the people in the story have died. So I haven’t really had to worry. Writer friends who’ve struggled with the issues you raise have said that not having to deal with this would’ve made their work easier. Except for a couple of people, I used real names throughout. I did not run passages by anyone. I did ask my husband and daughters if they were okay with me writing about certain things, and they were.
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 can’t name just one book or writer! I love so many, and try to absorb from each whatever might be useful. My truest love will always be novels, and for story and atmosphere I turned to: Laura van den Berg’s The Third Hotel; Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other; Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women; Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley; Tim Winton’s Dirt Music, and Graham Green’s The End of the Affair. I read Joan Didion’s collected essays—along with her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking—trying to figure out how they worked. Other memoirs that helped: Janet Malcom’s The Journalist and the Murderer; Cristina Rivera Garza’s Liliana’s Invincible Summer, Lacy M. Johnson’s The Other Side; Natasha Trethewey’s Memorial Drive; Alex Marzano-Lesnevich’s The Fact of a Body; Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House; Kathryn Shulz’s Lost and Found; and Chloé Cooper Jones’s Easy Beauty. Some books were more true crime than memoir: Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and Dave Cullen’s Columbine. Finally, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, re-encountered because I was teaching it, provided the solution to a structural problem I spent years struggling with, in addition to the pleasure of reading her prose.
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 can’t in good conscience say “Don’t be intimidated,” because the process is undeniably daunting. But it’s also true that cultivating faith in your story will see you through many dark nights of the soul.
What do you love about writing?
I love thinking about people, what they feel, what they do, what makes them who they are. I love being immersed in a story, the kaleidoscopic thrill of creating a world. I love playing with words and sentences, how what sits next to what has the potential to change everything.
What frustrates you about writing?
Self-doubt. Also, how long it takes for the work to settle into its best form.
What about writing surprises you?
That the most valuable insights come where and when you least expect them.
It took years to get enough distance from events that I could stand to look at them, and to write with curiosity and honesty, and then more years to figure out how to tell it. Finding a publisher was a nerve-wracking experience. I advise students to be patient, that their work just has to land on the right desk at the right time, but it was hard to do that myself.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
I’m terrible with routine and go long periods without writing. That said, a walk is the one thing that reliably leads to the desk.
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 play the piano and paint. Both provide a respite from words, which, ironically, often leads to more of them.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I have three novels in various states of incompletion. The one I’m most drawn to at the moment is set in the Panamanian highlands and is about two American teenagers who vanish while hiking the Continental Divide—I can’t seem to get away from disappearance.
My first thought was, I hope the ex is dead now. Otherwise, how would Karen Palmer ever find peace, much less publish this memoir? My second thoughts were to wonder if it's even possible, in 2025, to disappear as a family of four. I really look forward to reading this book, even if the essay from which it grew planted a frisson of fear I still feel hours later.