The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #68: Freda Epum

"Originally, I started writing because I wanted to be believed about my mental anguish—to give language to my experiences—and as I continued, I wanted to help other uncertain Black girls feel seen."

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 68th installment, featuring Freda Epum, author of The Gloomy Girl Variety Show: A Memoir. -Sari Botton

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Freda Epum. Photo by Jason Garrett.

Freda Epum is a Nigerian American writer and artist. She is the author of two chapbooks, Input/Output and Entryways into memories that might assemble me, which won the Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Competition. She is the co-creator of the Black American Tree Project. Epum’s work has been published in The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Entropy, Bending Genres, and others. She received her MFA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Originally from Tucson, she now lives in Cincinnati. Find her on Substack, Instagram, LinkedIn, and BlueSky.

Her memoir launch will take place next Wednesday, January 15th at 6:30pm at the Mercantile Library in Cincinnati.

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

I just turned 30 this year. I have been taking my writing seriously since 2015 when I wrote the first essay for what became my memoir, The Gloomy Girl Variety Show. Before writing, I studied art and art history.

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

The Gloomy Girl Variety Show: A Memoir, will be published with Feminist Press of the City University of New York January 14th, 2025.

What number book is this for you?

This is my first full length book. I’ve previously written two chapbooks, Input/Output and Entryways into memories that might assemble be.

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

Gloomy Girl is a memoir-in-essays inside of a book-length lyric told through speculative nonfiction. The narrator takes the reader on a “house hunt” akin to HGTV’s House Hunters. The book begins with an introduction to the house hunt and then is divided into three sections, (“House #1: The Falling Apart Foreigner Farm House; House #2: The Bountiful Blackness as Fear Bungalow; House #3: The Imperfectly Ill Island Abode,”), with a “housewarming” as the outro to the book.

In each house are essays, poems, artwork, and criticism telling the narrative of my own search for belonging as a Nigerian-American struggling with mental illness and racial isolation. The lyric element is most similar to Claudia Rankine’s Citizen and Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, illuminating a central theme (in this case, belonging under white supremacy) with lyrical prose throughout the whole book. The book could also be categorized as an “artist’s memoir” or graphic memoir as it includes images of my own artwork spanning the last 15 years. I derived inspiration from Gabirelle Civil’s Swallow the Fish when thinking through how to portray the life of an artist.

Gloomy Girl is a memoir-in-essays inside of a book-length lyric told through speculative nonfiction. The narrator takes the reader on a “house hunt” akin to HGTV’s House Hunters… In each house are essays, poems, artwork, and criticism telling the narrative of my own search for belonging as a Nigerian-American struggling with mental illness and racial isolation.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

I’m incredibly bad at elevator pitches, so I will share the jacket copy that Feminist Press wrote, which concisely summarizes my book:

“In The Gloomy Girl Variety Show, Freda Epum explores the opposing forces of her “no-place, no-where” identity as a Nigerian American daughter, diasporically displaced, who spent years in and out of institutions seeking treatment for life-threatening mental illness. Epum examines her journey through healthcare and housing systems via a pop cultural lens—our collective obsession with HGTV’s home buying and makeover shows—and a patchwork of poetry, art, and autotheory.

With raw honesty and glittering wit, this debut memoir maps the complexity of life under intersecting forms of oppression, revealing what it takes to turn from the brink of despair toward community and self-acceptance, find refuge in love, and reimagine home.

Gloomy Girl is a book for those suffering from chronic depression that would start their healing journey.”

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 originally came to writing through visual art. Since I was a child, my ambition was to be some sort of visual artist (an animator, painter, photographer, etc). I studied fine art and art history in college. I was an emotional 20-something Pisces who felt she had a lot to say and slowly my art became less representational. Soon enough, performance art drew me in with its conceptual and intellectual aims. I actually lost all of my artwork I had stuffed in a carry-on portfolio bag before I flew back to Tucson from Smith (where I went to school). I was so devastated that I became scared to create visual art again. I was also broke, living with my parents, and didn’t have the space or the money I wanted to restart my visual art practice.

I have been seriously pursuing writing since 2015, when I wrote the first essay for Gloomy Girl (which started with me writing in the margins while reading Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye) and began sharing my work with an audience at the Words on the Avenue series created by Tere Fowler Chapman in Tucson. There I got the confidence and affirmation needed to continue the pursuit of a creative career. I applied for MFA programs in 2016 and then wrote my thesis during my MFA program which became what is now Gloomy Girl. After graduating from grad school in 2019, I continued working on the book, querying around 90 agents, then signing with my agent, Reiko Davis of Defiore & Co, then editing the book for 2 more years, then going on submission and finally selling the book to Feminist Press in 2023, with publication coming in January 2025. I also applied for many grants, residencies, and workshops during this time, and formed online friends in places like The Binders Full of “x” communities on FB. These relationships formed the writing community I rely on today.

I didn’t really know what I was doing when I started drafting the book. I was going through such an emotional time in my life and I used writing as a space for healing and relief. It was initially an outpouring of emotion on the page. I wrote the first essay, “Scary Movies and Love Stories,” about returning to my parent’s home after college and thinking through memories and feelings stored in a house. Early in that writing process I said to myself, “this could be a book.” But I didn’t really know how to write a book, and I knew I needed guidance and time to study the craft of writing like I did with art. Originally, I started writing because I wanted to be believed about my mental anguish—to give language to my experiences—and as I continued, I wanted to help other uncertain Black girls feel seen.

Order the book…

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

I would definitely say finding a cohesive throughline for the book given the varying forms (poems, essays, images, criticism, autofiction, etc). I worked with my agent for two years off and on building a container—the premise of the reader following along on a fictitious and metaphorical house hunt.

The book is a story of my own healing journey, so I was also living my life as I was writing it, which extended the project because I couldn’t write a narrative of healing until parts of my actual life (relationships, self-conceptions, etc) had healed too.

Lastly, finding a publisher willing to put out genre-defying work from a relatively unknown writer was also a challenge. Along this publication journey, I often heard sentiments that my work was too specific, too singular. And so Gloomy Girl was a perfect fit with Feminist Press, as their mission is “creating a world where everyone sees themselves in a book.”

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 really struggled emotionally with the ethics of writing about real people in my life. There are definitely passages in the book that I chose to cut to preserve privacy and my relationships. All of the names of real people in my life have been changed. I didn’t show the book to any of these people for approval as I felt that really would have prevented me from having the emotional space to write in a very vulnerable way. There was something precious about writing this portion of my life story in isolation–it was very freeing.

I did show a near finished draft to my dad (this was after the book had sold but while I was still doing edits for my in-house editor), which actually became one of the final passages in the book, completing the narrator’s healing journey. I also wrote an essay directly questioning what was the capital “T” truth. Acknowledging in the narrative that I am just sharing my experience and that multiple truths exist outside of my own experience.

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.)

So many! Really, I was looking for a book that would mirror my own experiences. And I didn’t quite find that book until I wrote it but was able to piece together a reflection of myself along the way. I was drawn to memoirs by Black women writing about mental illness like Carefree Black Girls by Zeba Blay, I’m Telling the Truth But I’m Lying by Bassey Ikpi, This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins, and Willow Weep for Me by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah.

And in recent years found strong affinity within the work of Morgan Parker, Camoghnee Felix, J Wortham, Awaeke Emezi, and Christina Sharpe. I love the humor of Phoebe Robinson, Keah Brown, and Samantha Irby. As I explored the book length lyric form, I was inspired by Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, and Margo Jefferson’s Constructing a Nervous System. I grew as a cultural critic by reading the works of Kiese Laymon, Hanif Abduraqib, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Brittney Cooper, and Tressie McMillan Cottom. And the intimacy in the writing of Black feminists like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Barbara Smith continue to guide the type of relationship I want to have with my readers. The more poem-y poems are influenced by the work of Khadijah Queen, Renee Gladmann, and Danez Smith.

I didn’t really know what I was doing when I started drafting the book. I was going through such an emotional time in my life and I used writing as a space for healing and relief. It was initially an outpouring of emotion on the page. I wrote the first essay, “Scary Movies and Love Stories,” about returning to my parent’s home after college and thinking through memories and feelings stored in a house. Early in that writing process I said to myself, “this could be a book.” But I didn’t really know how to write a book, and I knew I needed guidance and time to study the craft of writing like I did with art.

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

Write for yourself at the beginning as opposed to writing for an audience, especially when writing about trauma. Don’t let the market or people in your life influence your writing. For someone who is writing a mixed-genre work, I’d make sure it has a cohesive theme, premise, or connecting thread that will take the reader on a journey both narratively and emotionally. Although it uses different forms, the message should remain clear and said different forms should enhance the overarching story rather than to detract or confuse the reader’s overall experience. Play the long game; work on your craft.

Also, I personally do wish I’d worked on building my platform while working on the book itself. Working with other writers and building community is essential—you will be counting on those in your community when it’s time for your book to debut, and the whole process is stressful enough that you will need emotional support. All the better if the community you find consists of people who would be your ideal reader. Finally, be aware of the inequities in publishing and be strategic about building a writing life.

What do you love about writing? 

For me, writing is a necessity. As a disabled person trying to craft a life based in creativity, there are no guarantees of financial stability, which is very difficult. I find this question difficult to answer; the publicity cycle for Gloomy Girl requires a great deal of additional work in order to get the audience that I believe the book deserves. I love writing because it saves me and it sustains my spirit, but at times it also breaks me. In that way, it can be like a lot of loves. Writing is something I’ll always return to–it’s like a breath of fresh air.

What frustrates you about writing?

My perfectionism gets in the way. As I’ve moved along the milestones of being a published author, writing because more of a job and less of a source of play or intellectual self-discovery. One’s concerns become more and more about the audience, the market, the cycles of promotion. When I return to the things that initially brought me to writing (play, joy in a long-term goal), those fires reignite my passion for writing. As I continue to pursue my writing career, it becomes increasingly normal to me, with its own joys and frustrations. Despite these frustrations, I feel fortunate to have a creative career where I can experience these joys.

What about writing surprises you?

The echoes are what continuously surprises me and what I foresee will always make me return to writing even when building a creative life while disabled feels hard. I’m always surprised by what 15-year-old or 22-year-old Freda was thinking about and how it relates to my current preoccupations. And how there are always echoes of my own curiosities and anxieties in the writing lives of other authors. That’s my favorite thing about memoir in particular, when I’m reading, I know I’m never alone in my experience of a particular feeling. And I hope my work can make others feel that way.

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

I don’t really have a routine, no. I’ve had Fibromyalgia since I began writing, with bad days and good days. My disability requires me to quickly take down ideas when I can so I may return to them when I have the energy and focus for a writing session. While I’m writing, I’m also reading a lot and consuming a great deal of media, observing the connections between those pieces, the political/cultural moment, and my own life. As I’ve become more interested in writing fiction and other genres, I have come to understand that my routines will need to change.

I really struggled emotionally with the ethics of writing about real people in my life. There are definitely passages in the book that I chose to cut to preserve privacy and my relationships. All of the names of real people in my life have been changed. I didn’t show the book to any of these people for approval as I felt that really would have prevented me from having the emotional space to write in a very vulnerable way. There was something precious about writing this portion of my life story in isolation–it was very freeing.

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?

Non-writing activities that I consider to be supportive of my process include watching TV, YouTube, and films, going to museums, taking screenshots of content on social media at 2 am and spamming my partner with my “saving for later,” messages, going on research rabbit holes. My process is very “reference-oriented.” I love making connections between my life and other forms of art or media. Though over the last few years, I find myself thinking of writing all the time given these tendencies. I’m looking into creative pursuits I can do for fun! I’ve been meaning to get into knitting and back into painting and photography. I need to resist turning my next book into a lyrical exploration of knitting though, haha.

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

I do. I have one project, I Dream of Labor, a reported memoir, that is more developed and I have been seeking funding for. I am in the research and drafting phase for that one. And two loose ideas for novels, a multi-pov family narrative of a Nigerian family processing intergenerational trauma, and a work of autofiction about a Nigerian-American returning to Nigeria for the first time at 30 years old. That work derives a lot of inspiration from A Particular Kind of Black Man and Magical/Realism.

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