Introducing Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing

When writer/teacher/friend Jennie Nash invited me to share an excerpt from Handling the Truth in the journal Compose, I had no idea just how beautiful this magazine was. I trusted Jennie; that was enough. I said yes before digging further.

Yesterday, Compose released its second issue. This biannual, digital magazine has Suzannah Windsor, Jennie Nash, Lisa Romeo, Andrew Rojas, Reem Al-Omari, Tamara Pratt, Christi Craig, and Tiffany Turpin Johnson on its mastthead. It features both new and emerging writers of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction—and interviews with such powerhouses as Eva Langston and Rebecca Hazleton.

The Fall 2013 issue is dear to my heart, not just because it includes a beautifully designed excerpt from Handling the Truth (I'm in love with the chosen image; it's so perfect for memoir), but because it has an essay called "Mean Mail" by my friend Katrina Kenison (we had talked about this incident in her life; it is amazing to read of it here and now) and an interview with the ever-kind and ever-smart Marion Roach Smith.

And plenty more.

Please take a look at what some very smart and generous literary people can do when they put their minds and talents together.

This is Compose.

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Visiting with Marion Roach Smith, and talking about truth telling

Every day, memoir writers have any number of good reasons to celebrate Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. She's knowledgeable and she's also generous (a powerful combination), and her blog provides a wealth of insight.

Today I am her lucky guest blogger. I'm writing about truth, here. There's an excerpt of Handling there, and a chance to win a copy.

Marion, this flower opens for you today.

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