resources for memoir writers

I've just finished writing the 17th edition of Juncture Notes, our memoir newsletter. My focus this time is on the development of characters in memoir. My sources are Alexie, Gay, and Ford. We'll send this out into the world in late July.

Meanwhile, we have updated our Juncture Workshops site with a compendium of the memoir resources (beyond our upcoming Longwood Gardens and Cape May, NJ, workshops) we've created over this past year. Bill has found a way to make all previous issues of Juncture Notes available for public viewing. Interviews with Paul Lisicky, Sy Montgomery, Angela Palm, Diana Abu-Jaber, Megan Stielstra, Chloe Honum, Kristen Radtke, Brian Turner, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Dani Shapiro, and so others can be found here. So can my thoughts on issues relating to the making of memoir, my recommended reads, my homework prompts, and the work of our readers.

(If you are one of our featured readers, you can now share your work with your friends.)

We urge you to check it all out here.

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On finding your memoir in the kitchen: dinner is served

Today on Huffington Post I'm sharing (in words) one of my seven video essays on the art of memoir. Here I'm thinking about those memoirs that begin in the kitchen and about the writers (MFK Fisher, Mary Gordon, Lavinia Greenlaw, Diana Abu-Jaber, and Chang-Rae Lee) who lead the way.

The link is here.

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Juncture Notes 03, our memoir newsletter, has launched

Juncture Notes 03, featuring Diana Abu-Jaber (her work, her thoughts), Jenny Diski, Sallie Tisdale, and our reader Tina Hudak, is now out in the world.

Each issue features the original art of my partner, William Sulit. This time, in honor of our food theme, Bill took images from our kitchen, including this cup of gorgeous loose tea.

If you would like to get on our subscription list, you can do that here. 

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Juncture Notes and News

With our September memoir workshop (on a working farm) now just one person shy of full, we've set out to find a new location for those who have expressed interest in working with us.

(If you're interested in that one last September spot—the chance to work with what has turned out to be a most remarkable gathering of writers, please let us know.)

We're now a few days away from announcing the details of our second workshop, tentatively slated for early November, and if you're interested in writing, reading, and knowing at a place that may be sandy, say, and alive with sea air and wild birds, send us a note at Juncture.

In the meantime, we'll be releasing Juncture Notes 3, our free memoir newsletter, early next week. In this issue, we'll be talking about Diana Abu-Jaber's new memoir (and hearing directly from her), among other things. If you're not on our list but would like to be, please sign up through our Juncture Writing Workshops site.

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Birds of Paradise, Diana Abu-Jaber, and writing what you love

Skyscape.  Choreography.  Color.  Birds.  I have carried these obsessions forward since I first began to write so many years ago.  A story begins, and I want to go there.  Want to write what I love most to write, though (of course) no story can consist of just these things.  They are but atmosphere.

I have been thinking about this lately because I have been reading Diana Abu-Jaber's new novel Birds of Paradise—an ambitious book featuring multiple points of view, the business of real estate, the artistry of exotic pastries, and a run-away teen.  Much is broken and strained in this family and Abu-Jaber takes her readers into complex emotional territory as the story unfolds. 

But what seduces me most throughout this novel is the command that Abu-Jaber demonstrates for Miami.  Her knowledge of this landscape is unimpeachable, her ability to get us into the physical stuff of it all her great achievement in Birds of Paradise.  I could almost hear her exhale when the landscape came into view—the gardens, the streetscapes.  I could feel her joy in making these scenes. 

I share a single example:

The scent of jasmine drifts into the windows.  Songbird season is over.  No more gardenias: hurricane season.  The trees have grown dense as rooftops; the plumeria hold their flower-tipped branches up like brides with golden corsages.  Avis sits hunched forward, clinging to her tin: she can feel the metal chill through her blouse, all the way to the pit of her stomach. She'd forgotten to eat again. 

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In the stillness of now

I try not to let things get beyond me in this life, but the last few weeks were dense with work and pressure.  I paid no attention to clocks, working as much as I could to complete a corporate project that has meant a lot to me.  I wrote a few talks, prepared a workshop session, took care of some magazine work for clients.

In between was a certain book stock crisis,  Google's announcement that my account (translation: my blog) had been violated and was no longer accessible, a lost camera, and lost glasses.  Piles grew tidal around me (which is not a happy thing for a neat freak).  The refrigerator emptied (save for a bottle of milk and a quarter stick of butter, perhaps a square of cheese, jello made in a moment of hunger).  Bills sat unpaid. I wore clothes from another era because the right-era clothes were, shall we say, indisposed.  I answered emails many days late, with what, I am sure, was an humiliating array of mistakes.  There should be a book:  Beth's Email Mistakes.  The sequel:  Beth's Blog Mistakes. 

And books—at least a dozen books—came into the house and were placed in a growing teeter on the living room table.  Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. Diana Abu-Jaber's Birds of Paradise.  A.S. King's Everybody Sees the Ants.  Peter Spiegelman's Thick as Thieves.  Philip Schultz's My Dyslexia.  Benjamin Markovits's Childish Loves.  Marc Schuster's The Grievers.  Ann Hite's Ghost on Black Mountain.  Anna Lefler's Chicktionary.  Roy Jacobsen's Child Wonder.  Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones.  Dana Spiotta's Eat the Document.  Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding.  More.

Can I just tell you how much I have missed reading books? Finding my way into the thick of a story?  Decoding the music others make?

Today, on this freakishly autumnal snowy day, I will join my family of dance friends in the city to celebrate the joint 70 year old birthdays of a still-swinging couple.  We'll stay overnight and brunch the next day with beloved friends in a white city, then head to a museum.  I'm going to take one of these books with me.  And then, come Sunday night, leaning into Monday morning, I am going to lie on a couch and do nothing but turn pages and return to the reader I am.

Thank you for putting up with all the recent launch news of You Are My Only.  I'm eager to once again spend my time here talking about the books of others.  That is why I created this space.  That is what makes me happy.

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