Pushing to Publish

I was 28 and pregnant when I happened upon Natalie Kusz’s Road Song in the Princeton University Bookstore. It was the sort of story that I, then an avid reader of traditional history and biography, had not read before—a life story that read like a novel that left me wanting to know so much more. I’d been writing poems up to that point in my life. I hadn’t done much in the way of publishing. I’d studied the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania and never taken a single writing workshop. Road Song left me wrecked by something urgent. I wanted to write like Kusz had written—honestly, poetically, of a life. I wanted to discover, in the personal, universal truths.

I didn’t see myself writing a book, of course. I thought of transitioning from the poem to the essay. I bought anthologies, read widely, taught myself about this genre. I thought about what had not been done quite yet.

The first piece I produced was perhaps 1,000 words and had a lost necklace at its center. When I thought about publishing it, I went straight back to Kusz, to the front matter in her book, where she acknowledged magazines that had accepted her excerpts. One of those magazines was called Iowa Woman, and I began at once to hunt it down. Finding i at last, I sent my essay that way. And then I waited, as writers will, for months.

This was back in the old day of mailboxes and stamps. I checked my own eagerly each day. Finally, indeed, an Iowa Woman letter showed up. It was long. It encouraged. It also critiqued. It was the first literary critique I’d ever received. It asked that I reconsider some passages and asked, too, if I’d consider submitting again.

I reconsidered, and I considered. “The Pearl Necklace” was my first published essay.....

— from my keynote talk yesterday to the inspired and inspiring crowd at the Philadephia Stories' Push to Publish conference. Thank you, Christine and Carla, for the opportunity.