We all have them: hard truths we swore we would never write about. This is, after all, the nature of silencing: we are conditioned to muzzle truths society shames and blames us for. Ironically, these same subjects are often the ones that urge us to the page in the first place: they want to be […]
I love Sonya Huber. She was my first mentor of my first semester of my MFA program back in 2009. She was also my thesis advisor my last semester in 2011. It was Sonya who introduced me to the idea that writing a memoir—book length or essay—begins with a messy excavation process. I’ll never forget […]
Dear writing sisters, There’s magic in the air. Writing magic. The kind of magic that comes from writing in sisterhood. Which is exactly the magic we’ve been stirring up these last two months in the Writing Out Loud Sisterhood Inner Circle. How do we do it? We gather live on teleconference calls twice a month. […]
Dear writing sisters, “It felt almost wrong, really, that writing about incest could be fun. Yet, in order to follow my own rules, I had to be playful. I had to explore new angles on a story I knew by heart, but that was actually far more complex and nuanced than I had understood.” Jeannine […]
Dear Writing Sisters, “All the valuable writing I’ve done in the last ten years has been done in the first twenty minutes after the first time I’ve wanted to leave the room.” Ron Carlson Sometimes the hardest part of writing memoir can be staying in your seat or, as Ron Carlson puts it, “staying in […]
Dear writing sisters, I loved loved loved appearing as a guest on the podcast STFU: We’re Not Done Talking Yet hosted by my dear writing sisters Charla Gabert and Danielle Woermann. We talked women and voice and writing and silencing. And, somewhere in there, I shared a story at the heart of my memoir-in-progress that […]
Dear writing sisters, I’ve been thinking about the complexity of motherhood—and the mother-daughter relationship—in a patriarchal culture that renders mothers as one-dimensional, self-sacrificing, benevolent women who do not have needs beyond caring for others. Never mind the myth that all women should become mothers and that all mothers are good mothers who live for motherhood. […]
Dear writing sisters, Anne Panning’s memoir Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss begins, “My mother appears regularly to me in the form of a dragonfly, or so I like to think.” From there she draws on decades of memory and experience, from her childhood home in rural Minnesota to the riverbanks of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, […]
Dear writing sisters, For a number of years now I’ve taken to decorating the corner mantel in our family room in place of a tree. I string it with star lights that twinkle, then I add ornaments that conjure snow–a snow owl and a tree made of feathers, white poodles with silver glitter, silvery pheasant feathers […]
Dear writing sisters, Years ago, when I was in my twenties and just setting out on what would become a quest to recovery my voice from silence, I joined a peer counseling class. The theme of the class was women’s empowerment. In this class, we learned how to listen to each other deeply. We would […]