The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #12: Carvell Wallace
"What if you could document someone’s recovery from trauma by first listing the traumas then writing about every day after that which marked a turning point in their recovery?"
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 twelfth installment, featuring , author of Another Word for Love, who publishes personal essays in his newsletter. -Sari Botton
Carvell Wallace is a writer and podcaster who covers race, art, culture, film, and music for a wide variety of news outlets. He has written profiles for GQ, Esquire, Glamour, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His podcasts include Closer Than They Appear, which explores race and identity in America, and Finding Fred, which focuses on Fred Rogers’s teachings and their application against systems of oppression. In 2019, Wallace co-authored The Sixth Man with Andre Iguodala, the Golden State Warriors forward. Another Word for Love is Wallace’s first memoir. He lives in Oakland, California.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I am 49 years old. The first time I remember trying to be a “writer” I was 8 or 9 and I tried my hand at a hardboiled detective novel about a cursed mask. I only got through one chapter, but I gave that chapter everything I had. We opened with a chase scene and unnecessarily elaborate descriptions of the cars involved. I still have it somewhere. I read it a few years ago and it seemed halfway decent considering, but maybe I’m just being generous to my younger self. Also I feel like I just devoted a lot of words to explaining that, maybe that idea is still active for me?
Later, I did a very brief stint of pretty bad travel writing in 2000, was the lead lyricist and songwriter for a band in the early aughts, and I tried and failed to write a memoir in 2010 after my mother died. But getting paid to write didn’t happen till I was about 40-ish.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
Another Word for Love, MCDxFSG. May 14, 2024
What number book is this for you?
Depending on how you count, #2 or #3. I was in an anthology back in like 2016 or something, and I co-wrote an athlete's memoir in 2018.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
It’s truly a memoir in essays, though I was advised to sort of hide that from publishers during the proposal as I was told they don’t like that. I’m not sure if that’s true. Consult your physician, results may vary, etc. But even though there is a central character who is on a singular journey, that journey is revealed in a series of essays, mediations, zooming in and out of moments — here a whole five-year stretch covered in a few graphs, here a single moment that takes up seven pages.
I think it’s that way for two reasons. 1) The book is about trauma and recovery and that’s the way it works in my experience — trauma jumbles time, it makes some moments go on forever and others disappear entirely. 2) This book came out this way probably because I was doing a bunch of other things while writing it, so the story came to me in chunks and there were long pauses in the writing of it.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book? (Up to one paragraph.)
I am not good at this so please enjoy our jacket copy:
“In Another Word for Love, Carvell Wallace excavates layers of his own history, situated in the struggles and beauty of growing up Black and queer in America. Wallace is an award-winning journalist who has built his career on writing unforgettable profiles, bringing a provocative and engaged sensitivity to his subjects. Now he turns the focus on himself, examining his own life and the circumstances that frame it—to make sense of seeking refuge from homelessness with a young single mother, living in a ghostly white Pennsylvania town, becoming a partner and parent, raising two teenagers in what feels like a collapsing world. With courage, vulnerability, and a remarkable expansiveness of spirit—not to mention a thrilling, and unrivaled, storytelling verve—Another Word for Love makes an irresistible case for life, healing, the fullness of our humanity, and, of course, love. It could be called a theory of life itself—a theory of being that will leave you open to the wonder of the world.”
It was terrifying. I was afraid people wouldn’t like me after they read it. I was afraid everyone would see some terrible thing about me that I had not yet seen about myself. I was afraid the book would not be very good and that I would be laughed out of the industry “never to write in this town again” so to speak.
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 in a few words is I posted a thing on Facebook about Trayvon Martin in like 2014 that went semi-viral. A friend of a friend asked if she could publish it on her blog, The Manifest Station. I was like “Sure, I don’t know what any of this is so yes.” I got asked to write another piece for the blog a few months later and I wrote something called “How to Parent on a Night Like This” and it went more viral. A 90’s supermodel (I can never remember which one but I think it was Cindy Crawford) retweeted it and then my notifications blew up and a few editors slid in my inbox, which ultimately brings us to today.
This book is different from the one I pitched, which sold at auction. The original idea was a book of magazine-style longform profiles of people who have hurt me in some way. The pandemic made that undoable for a good while and in the meantime I moved on to another idea, one much closer to core, and much closer to something I’d been thinking of for an even longer time: What if you could document someone’s recovery from trauma by first listing the traumas then writing about every day after that which marked a turning point in their recovery? That’s what this book turned out to be, which is not something I realized until I was almost done writing it.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
Um. It was terrifying. I was afraid people wouldn’t like me after they read it. I was afraid everyone would see some terrible thing about me that I had not yet seen about myself. I was afraid the book would not be very good and that I would be laughed out of the industry “never to write in this town again” so to speak.
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 and details. One person asked me to change/remove some things and I did. I ran another chapter by one person in its entirety because it involved a time and way in which I hurt them and I wanted them to have a chance to correct my memory of events, and tell me if I was representing things fairly from their perspective. That was also a nerve-wracking experience, but I didn’t know of any way this book could be worthwhile if I didn’t do that. It ended up being a very loving and possibly healing conversation where we talked deeply about our past and made longstanding amends to one another. They liked the chapter and had no notes.
I ran another chapter by one person in its entirety because it involved a time and way in which I hurt them and I wanted them to have a chance to correct my memory of events, and tell me if I was representing things fairly from their perspective. That was also a nerve-wracking experience, but I didn’t know of any way this book could be worthwhile if I didn’t do that. It ended up being a very loving and possibly healing conversation where we talked deeply about our past and made longstanding amends to one another.
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.)
You know, this question is funny because in my work as a journalist, I notice that musicians especially hate being asked about influences and they usually find some way to dodge the question. I think they think if they say, “We were influenced by Headhunters,” or whatever everyone’s going to compare their work to that. I just now understood that, when I read this question.
Anyway, there are the obvious ones, bell hooks’s Belonging, A Culture of Place, adrienne marie brown’s Emergent Strategies, (don’t compare me to them). I keep a June Jordan quote above my desk from her essay “For the Sake of a People's Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us.” that I think had a significant impact on the book's overall gestalt. But an influence that I see fewer people talking about online was Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a mother, biologist, and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. I took inspiration in her use of nature to meditate on the problems and solutions of our collective existence.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
Writing is hard. So, if you’re having a hard time or are scared, you’re in the right place. Joyce Carol Oates once said the biggest enemy of the writer is distraction and I find that to be true. I can write some stuff in the crevices of my life, but it’s hard to go deep while my mind is on other things — notifications and so forth. So I would say if you can, figure out some way to go on spiritual “do not disturb” for a day or two at a time.
You’ll probably get more work done in that few days than you would in months in the cracks of your normal life, whether that work is conceptual or material. The other advice, which everyone hates but which is true is, just do it. You can’t revise a blank page, so just put some bullshit down to get it down and then go back and make it good. My experience is that real understanding of what you’re writing doesn’t usually arrive until after you’ve taken a legitimate shot at writing it.
What do you love about writing?
Sheesh. I’m not sure there’s anything to be quite honest. I just can’t stop doing it because like many writers, I am somewhat enamored with the sound of my own voice, I produce words compulsively, and it's the only way I’ve come up with to pay my bills that I don’t unequivocally hate.
Okay, now that I’ve taken a few hours to think about it, I love the fact that my job is to overthink things and make poetry out of everything that happens. Because I’d be doing that obsessively anyway, and when I was working in non-profit and tech, this was a tremendous distraction from my daily responsibilities. So, I’m happy that my life feels (mostly) aligned with my job.
What frustrates you about writing?
It’s like I always have homework due. I always feel like I owe the world or an editor or publisher something, and every moment I’m not writing, I’m like “wait, shouldn’t I be writing right now?” But that may be true of all self-employed people, regardless of industry. Also putting things into words is hard. Like, I know that’s the main part of the job, but it can be frustrating, especially when people get mad that I didn’t do it the right way for them. My bad bro. I was trying!
What about writing surprises you?
I was really worried about this memoir, not just because of strangers, though it was partially that, but also how people in my life who know only a part of me would react to seeing all of this about me. I talked to a good friend and mentor about that who said, “yeah but you don’t yet know the freedom that comes on the other side of this…” She was right. That freedom is what has surprised me so far.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
I have a long routine of procrastinating, then freaking out, then writing tens of thousands of words in a long manic stretch, then procrastinating again. I think I’m getting less like that. Lately — and I really mean in the past few months — I’ve learned to set aside writing time, usually regular work hours 9-5ish, where I’m on the clock, and I get done what I can in that window. Once it’s over, I’m just like: “Welp, shop’s closed. Time to go for a walk and make dinner.” I think I like that better than the manic all-nighters and long periods of unproductive stress.
I love the fact that my job is to overthink things and make poetry out of everything that happens. Because I’d be doing that obsessively anyway, and when I was working in non-profit and tech, this was a tremendous distraction from my daily responsibilities. So, I’m happy that my life feels (mostly) aligned with my job.
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?
Cooking, seeing art, going out dancing, sex, dealing with plants are all “writing” activities to me because they call on the same kinds of creative connections, practice at being present, practice at abandoning the bondage of self in service of connecting with something or someone outside of you. I play guitar at home and sing songs, not very often or well, I might add, but it’s still fun.
Also, I just started a subscriber-only podcast on my Substack in which I get to re-create those days in my early twenties where I’d stay up all night smoking cigarettes and recording songs on my 4-track. I have five listeners, shout out to them, y’all want anything from the store?
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I’m doing two ghostwriting projects that are kind of off the record, and that’s keeping me busy. I have my Substack which is just getting off the ground again, and an advice- type podcast on Slate. I have another book brewing, but I only have the first line. Something like: “They turned the church where he got sober into luxury condos.” Maybe this will be fiction about a person who comes back to Oakland to deal with the murder of a friend? Not sure. I just made that up, but could be interesting.
Carvell, I enjoyed this Q&A much. Fun to read about your youthful hard-boiled detective story. My first attempts at being a writer were at the same age. I recall a story of a heroine on a white stallion. I don’t still have it. But I wonder if I’d come to it with the same grace as you did yours. I also appreciate you talking about the fear around publishing. I’m working on a memoir and publish personal essays and so relate. Hearing that echoed from other writers makes feel I’m in good company. Stoked to learn about your memoir in essays! Thank you for sharing.
And thank you, Sari, for sharing Carvell.
This is so interesting. Carvell’s journey of exploring his trauma and recovery underscores the complex ways personal pain can propel us into unexpected realms of public discourse and healing.