Hello Memoirists!
I hope you are enjoying the summer and your writing is going well.
Here’s what you can find in this newsletter:
- Recap & video of Author Q&A with Kristie Robin Johnson
- Mutual Motivation to get published
- Adding Member section to website (Call for content)
- Book Club Choice
- Creative Questers – side project
- Upcoming Events
Recording of Author Q&A with Kristie Robin Johnson
We had a great Q&A with Kristie Robin Johnson, author of High Cotton. Her beautifully and authentically written book changed the way that I think about essay collections. She was very generous with her knowledge shared about her publishing experience, how to avoid backlash, how to get essays published and more.
You can watch the video here: https://youtu.be/eFUUw0Dfg28
Here are some highlights of what she covered:
6:00 — Recommendations on essay collections
8:30 — Kristie’s publishing experience with a small press
13:35 — How to write about challenging topics “be a little bit ruthless and a little bit reckless.
17:45 — The value of an MFA
24:25 — How to get essays published (Submit, submit, submit!)
27:22 — Her path to find a publisher
28:30 — Getting awards
45:00 — The differences between writing about trauma in essays vs memoir
Mutual Motivation to get published
Kristie Robin Johnson has been published in many prestigious literary journals – her biggest tip to us to do the same?
SUBMIT, SUBMIT, SUBMIT!
She got us fired up to do just that. Thea Pueschel challenged me to make five submissions a month and I challenge you to do the same. That can be the same piece to five different magazines or five different pieces to five different places or whatever combination suits you.
If you’d like to set a goal of more or less, that’s great, too!
I have set up a WhatsApp group where we can share our progress, current calls for submissions, acceptances, and rejections. Please reply to this email or click here if you would like to be added to the group.
If you’re new to the process, don’t worry, I have put together a guide with some tips on how to submit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jUdbaCXXMvvOIUEBCLHO6U7kFX7bLjEHnS1JN36eN9U/edit?usp=sharing
Adding Member section to the website
I would like to add a section to the website where members can promote upcoming events, blogs, books, classes, or anything memoir related. Please reply to this email or email me at xtina.howell@memoirmentors.com if you have anything you would like to share there.
Book Club Choice: Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter
August 11, 2022 – 7:00pm Munich time, 10:00am Pacific
Sign up here: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/memoir-mentors/events/286726405/
In the Memoir Mentors Book Club, we read memoirs with a memoirist’s eye, looking for things that we could use in our writing or things we want to avoid.
We will be discussing Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter by Alison Wearing.
Alison Wearing led a largely carefree childhood until she learned, at the age of 12, that her family was a little more complex than she had realized. Sure her father had always been unusual compared to the other dads in the neighbourhood: he loved to bake croissants, wear silk pyjamas around the house, and skip down the street singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But when he came out of the closet in the 1970s, when homosexuality was still a cardinal taboo, it was a shock to everyone in the quiet community of Peterborough, Ontario—especially to his wife and three children.
Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is also the story of “coming out” as the daughter of a gay father. Already wrestling with an adolescent’s search for identity when her father came out of the closet, Alison promptly “went in,” concealing his sexual orientation from her friends and spinning extravagant stories about all of the “great straight things” they did together. Over time, Alison came to see that life with her father was surprisingly interesting and entertaining, even oddly inspiring, and in fact, there was nothing to hide.
Discussion questions can be found here: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/memoir-mentors/events/286726405/
Creative Questers – Side project
My friend Stefka Spiegel and I have started a new group that is non-genre specific where we will be hosting the 100 word story project that some of you participate in, as well as fun events like collaborative story building and more. You can join us here: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/creative-questers/
If you have any classes or event ideas that you would like to add or lead, please email us at creativequesters@gmail.com
Upcoming events
I’d prefer that you sign up through Meetup so I know who to expect and so that you know what the agenda is for the week, but if that’s too problematic, you can go directly to the Zoom link that we use every week:
https://zoom.us/j/4400465879?pwd=R0Y0RUp4YjAvdnJCODV0MkhNMXlmdz09
July 14: Write then Read: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/memoir-mentors/events/xndcrsydchbzb/
July 21: Write then Read: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/memoir-mentors/events/xndcrsydckbcc/
July 28: Speaking Your Story: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/memoir-mentors/events/zndcrsydckblc/
August 4: Write then Read: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/memoir-mentors/events/bzsxssydclbgb/
August 11: Book Club (Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter): https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/memoir-mentors/events/286726405/
August 18: Write then Read: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/memoir-mentors/events/xndcrsydclbxb/
August 25: Speaking Your Story: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/memoir-mentors/events/zndcrsydclbhc/