The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #72: Brooke Berman
"The memoir was easy. I feel awful saying that. But it was! It poured out of me."
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 72nd installment, featuring —filmmaker, playwright, and author of No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments. -Sari Botton
Brooke Berman is a playwright, filmmaker and memoirist whose feature film debut, Ramona At Midlife, will soon be available on platforms including Amazon Prime and Itunes. The film is available for Pre-Order on Apple TV now, and streaming on Prime starting Feb 11, 2025.
Brooke’s plays have been produced across the US and internationally at theaters including Steppenwolf, Primary Stages, 2nd Stage and developed at The O'Neill, The National Theatre Studio in London, Williamstown Theater Festival, Naked Angels and others. Brooke has received numerous awards and grants for her plays and support from Macdowell and Yaddo. She is a member of the WGAE and the Dramatists Guild and a graduate of The Juilliard School and Barnard College. She is an alumna of New Dramatists and the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and one of the founders of The Honor Roll, an advocacy group for female-identified playwrights over 40.
Brooke’s memoir No Place Like Home (Random House, Blackstone) is now available on Audible. After writing extensively about couch-surfing and barely legal sublets, Brooke now owns a coop in Queens, where she lives with her husband, writer Gordon Haber, and teenage son.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I’m 55 (turning 56 in February) and I have been writing for as long as I can remember. At my hippie preschool in the Detroit suburbs, we “wrote” books; my first was called The Cat Came Back. (I also illustrated it.) I won a school poetry contest in fourth grade, but began to write in earnest, professionally, when I was 20. An aspiring actor, I wrote and performed work for local coffeehouses and used my own material to audition. At 21, after moving back to New York from Providence, R.I., I began performing my work at downtown coffee houses, bars, and theaters.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
Although I have published more than half a dozen plays, my one and only proper BOOK is No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments. It was published in print by Random House in 2010 and as an audiobook by Blackstone in 2021. My most recent piece of writing is the film, Ramona At Midlife, launching on streaming platforms February 11, 2025, and available for preorder on Apple TV now. I also wrote an E-book called 9 Juicy Weeks to A Wonderfully Imperfect First Draft. It’s a guide for writers, available on Amazon for $5.99.
What number book is this for you?
One and only published book (so far). Ramona is the seventh feature film I’ve written, but the first to actually get made!
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
No Place Like Home is a coming-of-age memoir. And here’s what was great about writing it: for a year or two prior, I wanted to write a play set in New York’s East Village of the 1990’s. (A decade later I wrote that play, Dearly Beloved, and workshopped it at Theatreworks Hartford and the Hangar Theater in Ithaca, NY.) But I couldn’t figure out the plot because all I really wanted to talk about was the world—the absurdity of trying to find an apartment using Village Voice personal ads back before we used the Internet or apps; the way it felt to walk up Avenue A from the photo booth at Little Rickie’s, wondering if anyone I knew was working at the coffee shop Limbo; taking baths at a friend’s place (bathtub in the kitchen) because my sublet only had a stall shower. This was not a play! There was no plot! But once I began to unpack the plot of my own life, there was a book!
I was an actor in my early 20’s and became interested in solo theater after seeing Spalding Gray perform one of his monologues, the one that became Perfect Vacation. I started seeking out solo performers—Holly Hughes, John Leguizamo, David Cale—and really fell in love with the form. It thrilled me to watch a performer play themselves and speak directly to the audience. It felt personal and urgent: Here’s me talking to you.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
Portrait of the Theater Artist as a Young Woman Without Cash. Or: Midwestern girl moves to the Big City to make it big in the theater, not realizing how much it costs, literally and spiritually, to live there.
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 was an actor in my early 20’s and became interested in solo theater after seeing Spalding Gray perform one of his monologues, the one that became Perfect Vacation. I started seeking out solo performers—Holly Hughes, John Leguizamo, David Cale—and really fell in love with the form. It thrilled me to watch a performer play themselves and speak directly to the audience. It felt personal and urgent: Here’s me talking to you. This was exactly the kind of theater I wanted to make and be part of. For a few years, I was part of a collective called Solo 5 (along with writers Aaron Landsman, Tanya Barfield, Andrea Kleine and actor Adrian Danzig) and that gradually led to writing more conventional plays.
I had already produced two of my one-acts when I got accepted to the Juilliard playwriting program, where I studied with Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang. Marsha said, “We have to figure out how to make your plays look like plays on the page.” That same year, I had my first professional production at Actors Theater of Louisville’s Humana Festival, and was off to the races.
Over the next decade, I wrote one, sometimes two, full-length plays a year plus numerous shorter pieces. I wanted to amass a body of work. And my favorite part was and still is collaborating with actors, so I spent a great deal of time developing plays in workshops and studios. Plus, I’ve always been interested in form, so my plays broke the fourth wall, used journal excerpts and letters, included visions of and visitations from dead people and so on.
I began to write films after selling the rights to my play SMASHING to Natalie Portman. But once in LA, a working screenwriter utterly mystified by how hard it is to get a project green-lit, I turned to directing. Joey Soloway advised, “Make your own work.” They were right. And so I did.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
The memoir was easy. I feel awful saying that. But it was! It poured out of me.
I had a play running at Primary Stages in 2008 set in the world of itinerant New Yorkers. (Before the 2008 financial crisis, everyone over 40, mostly non-artists, said, But I don’t understand—why can’t they pay for their own apartments? Then after 2008, they all said, Ohhhhh….) The New York Times ran a piece by Penelope Green about the play and me, leaning into the economics of being an aspiring artist in New York in the early 00’s. At the time, I had just been priced out of the one stable adult apartment I’d lived in—a 1BR on Mott Street, first lease without roommates! When I’d moved in, a few years earlier, I was asked to sign over my rights to rent-control—I’m sure that’s illegal, but it’s New York real estate, shit happens. Each year there was a slight increase and then, one year, it was a substantial increase that I wasn’t in the financial position to pay.
With a play in production and few job prospects, I put my things in storage and temporarily took shelter at New Dramatists, a brilliant nonprofit supporting new plays and playwrights, housed in a church on West 44th Street. ND famously had rooms on the top floor for affiliated writers; August Wilson wrote Joe Turner’s Come and Gone from those rooms; Sherry Kramer wrote The Weight of a Man. Nilo Cruz lived in the building when he first came to New York. Sarah Kane stayed there as a guest artist on exchange from The Royal Court. And me! I spent a month in “Seventh Heaven” at New Dramatists while my play was in rehearsals.
After reading the Times piece, an editor saw my play and called, asking if there might be a book in all this. I’d always wanted to write one, and I said yes. It was a dream come true. Nothing else in my professional life has come as easily.
The hard part was after its pub date. Random House fired their in-house publicist the week of my book launch. I was five months pregnant and did whatever kind of book tour I could muster. I had my son a few months later and woke up in a new life. It was like, I went to sleep a newly published author with killer agents and woke up an exhausted new mom without a book agent or second book deal. Cinderella after the ball. But with a baby.
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 was careful! I wanted to tell my story, but I had no desire to mess with anyone.
I wrote the entire first draft without changing anyone’s name (except my ex-boyfriend who became “Noah” in the book) staying as true as I could to my version of events. I wanted to locate the spine of the story. To do that, I let myself write honestly and without any internal censor, without taking care of anyone or protecting feelings. Then I went back and did a mindfulness pass, interrogating everything I’d written, asking myself what was necessary.
In the second pass, I let “real people” become characters, which sometimes meant merging a few separate people into a composite or building the role a particular character played. After this pass, I made a list of people to contact and seek permission from and a second list of people I did not want to talk to again. Anyone I wasn’t prepared to call and speak to directly got a pseudonym and a few obscurations—a different job, a different backstory, etc. But I expressly asked permission from anyone whose name remained intact, offering to let those people read the passages in which they were described. Nobody asked for changes. One person asked to not be mentioned and went on to say that while she trusted me, she did not want to revisit that part of her life. To this day, we’ve never discussed the book.
I mostly feel good about what I wrote. Except…when recording the audiobook, a decade later, I felt that there were missing pieces, the struggles get resolved a little too neatly. I wish I’d done one final edit for grit. In general, I tend to overemphasize hope. It’s the inner Pollyanna Midwestern Good Girl in me. If I wrote the book today, I’d probably let those darker, lonelier times feel as awful as they did at the time.
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 few memoirs to get started. Truthfully the one I felt most aligned with was Patti Smith’s Just Kids because it was about the same kinds of things: friendship, coming of age as an artist in New York City, figuring out the endless labyrinth of how to feed oneself, materially and spiritually.
After reading the Times piece, an editor saw my play and called, asking if there might be a book in all this. I’d always wanted to write one, and I said yes. It was a dream come true. Nothing else in my professional life has come as easily. The hard part was after its pub date. Random House fired their in-house publicist the week of my book launch. I was five months pregnant and did whatever kind of book tour I could muster. I had my son a few months later and woke up in a new life.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
Tell the truth. Write it all down. Trust the work to find its path. Tell yourself the story of your own life like a bedtime story. Or a Hollywood movie with a three-act structure. Note the plot points. Lean into them. Say the things you always wanted to but couldn’t at the time. Know in your heart that our stories matter. Spalding Gray wrote in the introduction to Sex and Death To The Age 14 that “During the Fall of Rome, the last artists were the chroniclers.” If that’s true, then memoir is crucial right now. Your story is necessary.
What do you love about writing?
Writing is when I am most alive. I’m happiest and most myself. I get to tune the world out and find my inner life. Without sounding super cringey, writing is where I source my power and hear myself.
What frustrates you about writing?
As a working mom, I never feel like I can find enough time or the right kind of focus. I have to be really diligent about creating and fostering both. Seeking them out. Scheduling them. Being vigilant. Getting out of the house to write. Making sure I actually do it. My husband gave me the best writing advice ever: Lower your standards. Do twenty minutes a day, but do it first.
What about writing surprises you?
I don’t know! Maybe that there are periods I just can’t do it at all, and periods where it flows easily. Or that I can tell the same story over and over again without realizing it (In many ways, Ramona at Midlife is a more adult take on my play Smashing; at least four of my plays, most recently A Model City, hinge on the bittersweet ups and downs of female friendship.)
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine or writing at specific times?
My writing practice reinvents itself every three months according to my work schedule, my son’s schedule, and our family schedule. Every few months I have to create a new set of guidelines and routines. Left to my own devices, I’d write first thing in the morning, but that rarely happens these days. Lately I like to go to the library or a coffee shop, like I’m keeping office hours or better yet, taking myself on a date.
I wanted to locate the spine of the story. To do that, I let myself write honestly and without any internal censor, without taking care of anyone or protecting feelings. Then I went back and did a mindfulness pass, interrogating everything I’d written, asking myself what was necessary.
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?
Yes! I’m a filmmaker and playwright. Recently I’ve been learning the craft of directing for episodic TV, which is surprisingly different than directing an indie feature. I have a yoga practice (25 years) and meditation practice. Both of which help me connect with my creative voice and with my body. So much of the best writing comes from the body. I started practicing Qui Gong during the pandemic with an incredible teacher in LA. The body-mind sync helps me write. My mind races, my body lusts (for things and people, for the past, for chocolate…). Letting them both slow down and sync up helps me write.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I just finished writing a movie called Drama Club about the year that John Hughes sent The Breakfast Club actors to our high school to observe us. I went to Hughes’s alma mater, Glenbrook North, and I’m in the process of trying to set that film up. Ramona launches on streaming soon, so I’ve been quite busy promoting that. And I’m starting a new play inspired by a few people I met waitressing in the East Village in my 20’s.
I love reading about writers as they bang around through the barriers between them and their artistic goals. I think it’s called “living,” and it’s what makes writing rich.
NICE!