The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #86: Maureen Stanton

"I'd given up on this memoir, but for some reason I opened up the file one day a couple of years ago. The story still compelled me, so I thought I'd try to publish parts of it..."

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 86th installment, featuring

Maureen Stanton

, author most recently of The Murmur of Everything Moving: A Memoir. -Sari Botton

---

Maureen Stanton. Photo by Heather Perry.

Maureen Stanton is the author of The Murmur of Everything Moving: A Memoir, winner of the Donald Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence; Body Leaping Backward: Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood, winner of a Maine Literary Award and a People Magazine "Best New Books" pick; and Killer Stuff and Tons of Money: An Insider's Look at the World of Flea Markets, Antiques, and Collecting, winner of a Massachusetts Book Award and a Parade Magazine "12 Great Summer Reads" selection. Her essays have been widely published and recognized with Pushcart Prizes, Sewanee Review award, Iowa Review Award, American Literary Review award, and several "Notable" essays in Best American Essays, among other recognition. Read essays and learn more at maureenstantonwriter.com

—

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

I'm 64 years old. I've been writing for four decades, since I was an undergraduate in the early 1980s. I first published an article in 1986 (in the un-illustrious trade magazine, The Engraver's Journal). My first essay was published in 1990 when I was 30.

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

The Murmur of Everything Moving: A Memoir. The release date is March 15, 2025.

What number book is this for you?

This is my third published book.

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

This is a memoir; it fits all the hallmarks of the form. It tells a story from a just one part of my life, unlike an autobiography; it takes a narrative approach (not fragmented, like collage, or a collection of stand-alone essays), and it privileges the exploration of remembered experience. I see it as a witness narrative, a testimony.

The Murmur of Everything Moving is a story of love, loss, and longing. When I was in my twenties, my boyfriend, who was 29, was diagnosed with a terminal illness. We embarked on an all-out effort to save his life. Meanwhile, his boyhood friend, Joey, a drug addict, sold Steve's pain medications to raise money for Steve's experimental treatments. Only one of the young men would survive. The memoir is an odyssey through the difficult but exquisite terrain of love—romantic, brotherly, spiritual—in the face of mortality.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

The Murmur of Everything Moving is a story of love, loss, and longing. When I was in my twenties, my boyfriend, who was 29, was diagnosed with a terminal illness. We embarked on an all-out effort to save his life. Meanwhile, his boyhood friend, Joey, a drug addict, sold Steve's pain medications to raise money for Steve's experimental treatments. Only one of the young men would survive. The memoir is an odyssey through the difficult but exquisite terrain of love—romantic, brotherly, spiritual—in the face of mortality.

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 journey to "become" a writer is long and circuitous. As an undergraduate, I asked my creative writing professor about applying to MFA programs. He discouraged me, and I took that to mean I was not talented or promising. I realized much later that he was probably suggesting that I'd have a better chance if I waited a couple years and developed my writing.

I continued writing on the side as my life took various plot twists and geographic moves. Then I had a midlife-crisis at 35; I realized that my life was maybe half over and I hadn't given a real effort to my dream of "becoming" a writer. I quit my job, lived on as little as possible to preserve time to write, and then at 37, went off to an MFA program, graduating at the age of 40. In graduate school, I wrote the first draft of The Murmur of Everything Moving. Now 25 years later, it's finally being published.

Order the book…

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

Back in September 2001, a year after I finished my MFA, an agent was interested in taking this book out. We were supposed to chat after the weekend, but then the terrorist attacks on the Trade Towers in NYC happened. My memoir tells a sad story, but the mood of the country had changed. Nobody was interested in the manuscript.

I set the book aside and years passed while I worked on my first book, an immersion-journalism exploration of flea market and antique culture, from the perspective of an itinerant dealer—Killer Stuff and Tons of Money. After Killer Stuff came out in 2011, another agent tried this memoir in the market, but gave up after a handful of declines. It wasn't a great time for memoir. I set this book aside and another decade passed, during which I worked on my second book, a coming-of-age memoir of my wayward teen years in the 1970s, Body Leaping Backward, which was published in 2019.

I'd given up on this memoir, but for some reason I opened up the file one day a couple of years ago. The story still compelled me, so I thought I'd try to publish parts of it. I created two stand-alone pieces; one was published in New York Times "Modern Love" column ("An Engagement Ring but No Fiancé"), and another won the Sewanee Review nonfiction contest. I saw a post for the Donald Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, with a $10,000 prize and publication, so almost on a whim, I entered the memoir. I told myself that would be the last time I do anything with that book and then I'd put it away forever.

I was quite surprised it was chosen as the winner. The judge, Stephen Kiernan, is a novelist, so I didn't think a memoir had much of a chance.

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?

Nobody asks to be written about in someone's else's life story, so I almost always change names and identifying details to protect people's privacy. For this current memoir, since my boyfriend was deceased, I used his real first name, but not his last name. I changed the names of his children and family members, and I didn't reveal their specific locations.

In Body Leaping Backward, my coming-of-age memoir, it was tricky because the prison in my hometown of Walpole, Massachusetts, which at the time was called Walpole Prison, served as a metaphor for the underlying theme of the book. So I couldn't change the town name, but I didn't use specific street names. I changed the names and identifying details of most of the people in the book. I used the real names of my siblings, with their permission, and the real name of a drug dealer, who is deceased. (That segment is just a couple paragraphs, but his sister threatened to sue me). I know my rights concerning invasion of privacy and defamation; I had ample evidence that what I wrote was true (newspaper accounts, interviews with other people who corroborated my memory). Still, it would be a hassle and costly to be sued, even if I was legally right.

I love the first generative stage of writing, which feels deeply intuitive. I have an idea of what I'm writing about, chasing an idea or an obsession, but I don't try to control what pours out of me. This part often leads to surprising connections and juxtapositions. But I also love the process of revising. My first drafts are often so messy and terrible that I feel like I forgot how to write. I have to conjure my mantra: you can make it better. So there's a different joy and satisfaction in applying the craft, which is less intuitive and more intellectual.

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 so many memoirs; I love the form. And I love experimentation, like Nick Flynn's memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, but what I find most compelling are memoirs that are immersive, with details that transport me into the moments and places and experiences of the writer. Two excellent memoirs that carried me away into different worlds were Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope. She was the wife of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, who was exiled to a Siberian gulag after he wrote a poem critical of Stalin. She writes of their last years together. I read it in an entire day and wept at the end.

Another immersive book is William Finnegan's Barbarian Days, which I love for his exquisite writing, but also because it whisked me into a world of big-wave surfing, something I had little prior interest in and certainly would never experience myself. Finnegan dropped out of college in the late 1960s to travel the world in the hunt of undiscovered magnificent waves to surf.

I loved Tove Ditlevsen's Copenhagen Trilogy for her beautiful writing and acute observations of human nature. All Down Darkness Wide by Sean Hewitt, about living with a severely depressed partner, is stunningly beautiful and moving. And Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Paterson is hilariously and also gorgeously written. It's not a coincidence that these three writers are poets.

These books didn't directly inspire my recent memoir, but I strived to provide the sort of detail that allows readers to enter into imaginative realms, where they can viscerally experience the story. That's why I think of my memoir as a witness narrative, because the reader is brought close to the events. That's not to say I don't appreciate reflection and context and narrative distance in memoir, or more essayistic memoirs.

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 regularly tell my students, especially those who are serious about a literary path, that their stories matter, that their voices are important to the historical record, to our understanding of each other.

I have more specific advice for writers at various stages. Maybe the most common advice I offer for memoir writers is for them to write as if nobody is ever going to read it, so they can be as honest as possible. Don't worry about anything they put on the page; just get the first draft done. After the story is spilled onto the page, then they can step back and understand that the next stage is to manipulate the text to make the story compelling and powerful and beautiful.

Very late in the writing, when they might be sending an essay or book out for publication, that's when to look at the manuscript with an eye toward protecting the privacy of others and protecting themselves legally and ethically.

What do you love about writing? 

I love the first generative stage of writing, which feels deeply intuitive. I have an idea of what I'm writing about, chasing an idea or an obsession, but I don't try to control what pours out of me. This part often leads to surprising connections and juxtapositions. But I also love the process of revising. My first drafts are often so messy and terrible that I feel like I forgot how to write. I have to conjure my mantra: you can make it better. So there's a different joy and satisfaction in applying the craft, which is less intuitive and more intellectual.

What frustrates you about writing?

My main frustration is not with writing, but with not writing. As an academic, I find so little time to write during the school year. Summers fly by. It's just not enough time.

What about writing surprises you?

I'm surprised by how much I need writing in my life. When I'm not writing, I tend to get a bit unhinged and despairing. I had a counselor tell me this in my early 30s, the counselor who helped my through the process of taking care of my boyfriend as he was dying, which is the story I tell in The Murmur of Everything Moving. I have a note on a scrap of paper dated January 20, 1993--which has surprisingly survived my many geographical moves (six states, twice as many cities)--to remind myself: "Do not be away from writers and writing. You become ungrounded. You become sad and approach depression. Remember this forever."

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

In graduate school, my advisor, Bill Roorbach, gave me a useful piece of advice: schedule your writing time. That way, if someone asks you to do something, you can look at our calendar and say, Sorry, I have a commitment.

I did that for a long time, but lately the only time I can find to write is on weekends during the academic year and in summer, usually first thing in the morning, after coffee. The routines that help my writing when I'm not at the desk are swimming in the summer (it's like a sensory deprivation tank, perfect for thinking and obsessing, or the opposite, clearing away the mental clutter), and walking on the beach in winter. I'm fortunate enough to live near a state park in Maine with a long sandy beach. That's where ideas come to me, or sometimes just words or phrases. And it's also a place to clear anxiety and noise from my mind. "Writing" happens in those rituals.

I had a midlife-crisis at 35; I realized that my life was maybe half over and I hadn't given a real effort to my dream of "becoming" a writer. I quit my job, lived on as little as possible to preserve time to write, and then at 37, went off to an MFA program, graduating at the age of 40. In graduate school, I wrote the first draft of The Murmur of Everything Moving. Now 25 years later, it's finally being published.

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 think I just answered the second part of this question above. The meditative space where writing happens can change, depending on the circumstances of my life. For many years, in summers I'd start the day gardening and weeding, which was time to think. Sometime it's driving. My commute to my job is ridiculous. drive from Maine to Massachusetts, which is 2.5 hours one way. I always carry a little notebook and jot down thoughts, in short-hand as a placeholder since I'm driving on the highway. I tried a tape recorder but I didn't take to that.

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

I always have a couple projects in the works. I've been writing about my mother, who has Alzheimer's. The disease is both crushingly heartbreaking and vexing, but from a distanced perspective, weird and fascinating. I have something (a long essay? Novella-length piece, memoir-ella?) about my grandmother, who was a maid. I started a novel, which might just be a short story, and a screenplay idea with an outline and some pages, that I'd love to get back to. I have an essay collection I've been trying to publish, which keeps changing as I add new pieces, and another collection of nature-writing pieces that is in early stages. I have a wall of ideas on scraps of paper. Too many ideas, not enough time.

Thank you so much for this opportunity to articulate my thoughts about writing, and for this discussion about memoir, which is a form I love to read, teach, and write. I haven't stepped back in a long while to ponder my own writing journey, but this process has made me want to get to the desk and write!

---

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