Talking Memoir and Life with Friends on the Liars Club Oddcast

What a fun conversation I had with the Liars Club a few weeks ago. I mean, they'd asked questions, I'd start laughing, and then I'd have to think quick to come up with answers.

Because, you know, the pressure was on.

We talked about memoir, Juncture workshops, young-adult literature, life, and what it means to be a writer alive in this world.

With thanks to Kelly Simmons, Jon McGoran, Gregory Frost, Merry Jones, and Keith Strunk. Great writers and people, all. It's lovely to imagine them sitting around a table, chatting. It's lovely to be in their presence.

To listen to the whole thing, go here.

And if you happen to be in Frenchtown, NJ, next Thursday evening, join us for the Frenchtown Empathy Project. Kelly Simmons will be in the house. Keith Strunk will, through our writers, on the stage. And all of those who have joined us for this memoir week will be sharing their words for the people of Frenchtown, who are so graciously hosting Juncture.

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Juncture Notes 07: coming soon

We're still in a bit of a farm-induced haze here at Juncture. Missing those writers we came to know on that slice of Central Pennsylvania earth. Imagining those stories flowing forward.

Our next issue of Juncture Notes will feature the scenes from and lessons of that workshop, as well thoughts on a new bestselling memoir. We'll send it out to our list in a day or so. If you'd like to be on that list, just sign up here. Juncture Notes, which combines Bill's art with my memoir obsession, is free.

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farm scenes. images from the inaugural Juncture Workshop.

It's been almost a year since Bill and I first began to talk about the creation of a landscape-immersive writing workshop series and eight months since we started planning in earnest. We chose a western Pennsylvania farm for our inaugural experience, a place where we believed that the history, authenticity, and land itself would yield, reflect, demand, transform. A place where hard work is earth work. Where routines dictate, except, of course, in all those cases, at all those times, when human beings have no actual authority.

We write about life, when we write memoir. This is life.

We had come to know these writers in the days leading up to the week. Or, we thought we had. But as each arrived, waved their hands, threw her arms around us, settled in, we learned so much more. About them, but also (inevitably) about ourselves.

There were lessons for us all.

We were fed the food of the earth at a time when every drop of water counted. We sat in circles on soft couches and hard chairs and trusted. We leaned forward or sat back. We were intensity. We were calm. We couldn't find what we needed to find and then (miraculously) we did.

I will write more of this soon. The next issue of our Juncture workshop newsletter will carry this story forward. For now, this post is an act of gratitude. A thank you for those who came, those who believed, those who, by making a commitment to the group and to themselves, by doing the asked thing even when the asked thing was a hard thing, grew.

Before our very eyes.

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Embrace Complexity/Write It for the Young at Heart (video series)

A month ago, we shared our first video series on the making of memoir, a Udemy offering that can now be found here.

This past week, we filmed a series of ten video essays all relating to the big challenges, themes, and opportunities that present themselves to those writing for the young at heart. These essays reflect the thinking I've done over the past many years on topics ranging from the question, What is excellence? in this category, to the essential truths in all fictions, to the development of authentic voices and complex characters. Some of the pieces are adapted from keynote talks; most of the material is brand new, fashioned from the challenges I've faced as a writer, from the conversations I've had with teen readers and fellow prize jury members, and from my ongoing dialogue with the leading practitioners of YA and MG.

The full suite of videos is now available through Udemy, here.

Today I'm sharing this single episode from the series. I'm focused on complexity here—why it is important, and how it is achieved. I hope you'll find the time to watch it through. If you like what you see, perhaps you'll share it with a friend. If you'd like to receive an update when the series goes live, you know where to find me.

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Juncture Workshops: we're in deep planning mode for Field Notes

Oh, it's getting exciting. Oh, it is. Every day of Juncture Workshops (Field Notes) now developed, reading by exercise by pause. The writers' own work ready for deep review. Lab Girl and the Lab Girl reading guide to be discussed over dinner. Mini lectures on form and universality.

September can't come soon enough, as we Field Noters now like to say.

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some words about my husband, the essential force behind Juncture

First of all, he's beautiful. You see him once, you know that. Second (since I'm already counting), his calm ways calm me. I can be out in the world, under assault, confused by the assault, and he's with me. You don't need to deal with that, he'll say. And it's true, I think, I don't. We'll have dinner, watch a movie, and the wounds of the day will be gone.

Third, and I promise that I'll be stopping here, he cares about the things he does, and I love how much he cares. Launching Juncture Workshops was Bill's idea. Crafting its image, its material self (a bank, a PO box, tax filings)—that was all his doing. The branding, the web work, the advertisements, the photography, the discovery of and interactions with the farm, the Cape May painted lady, the garden where these workshops will be held: that's all Bill. So is building the teleprompter that enabled the filming of these videos we'll soon be releasing through Udemy—videos that celebrate great memoirs, videos that suggest new ways to write—not to mention the positioning of the lights, the filtering of the camera, the selection of the music, and all the post production. So is the design (and the art) of our memoir newsletter.

Bill is in possession of uncountable talents. He's bringing all of them to Juncture. Every day he finds a new way to do even more. So that much of this weekend and part of last week he's been researching and designing one of the very special gifts the workshop attendees will be receiving. So that all this weekend and part of last week, he's taken extreme pleasure from doing just that.

Bill's joy in co-creating Juncture is contagious. His faith in me as I build the content, ready the agenda, write the scripts, and prepare (also joyfully) to teach makes this thirty-year marriage feel brand new.

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oh, the places I'll go

Last evening, between storm surges and convention watching, Bill and I finished filming the sixth video in our memoir series (see our introductory video here). We put the finishing touches on the packet we're about to send to the first dozen writers (we love them all already) who will be joining us for our five-day workshop on the old farm in September. We looked, again, ahead.

Here's where I'll be (when not in this house reading and writing memoir) over the next few months:

On August 4th, I'll be at the Stone Harbor Yacht Club in Stone Harbor, NJ, sharing my Jersey Shore novel, This Is the Story of You and reading some of the Jersey Shore pieces I've written over time (a chapter in Small Damages, a chapter in Love: A Philadelphia Affair). We'll also have some memoir writing fun. The event begins at 3:30.

On September 4, I'll be in Decatur, GA, for that most amazing AJC Decatur Book Festival, sharing a panel (at 2:00) with young adult writers Alexandra Sirowy and Ami Allen-Vath.

On September 11, I'll be on a farm with the incredible memoirists who have said yes to the inaugural Juncture Workshop series.

On October 15, I'll be joining fiction writers Angela Flournoy and Toni Jensen, poets Robin Coste Lewis and Chloe Honum, YA fantasy writer Brenna Yovanoff, mystery writer Will Thomas, and romance author Sherry Thomas at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma for the Nimrod Conference Readers and Writers.

On November 1, I'll be in Cape May, NJ, for the second Juncture Workshop.

On November 8, I'll be conducting training for the T/E School District.

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Juncture Notes 02—soon on its way

We'll be releasing Juncture Notes 02 shortly. Talk about memoir, the lives of memoirists, and the stories we think you'll love—all mixed in with my husband's ceramics/photographic artistry.

If you're interested in receiving a copy, sign up through the Juncture Workshops site, here on the blog, to the left.

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the art of Juncture Notes (issue 2 will soon be on its way)

We've been so thrilled by the response to Juncture Notes—the writing elicited by our prompt, the questions about memoir, the interest in our five-day memoir workshop. We're now at work on our second release, which should go out in a week or so. If you're interested in receiving a copy, just click on the link to the left of this blog post (or on the workshop link above). That's the sure-fire way of beating the spam filters, or so we believe, anyway.

One of the questions we've been receiving relates to the art that is folded in with the words. That art is, as many of you have guessed, the work of my partner in life and in this Juncture enterprise, William Sulit. I've shared his work in many media from time to time on my blog. Bill's work was recently selected for the prestigious Clay Studio National exhibit, beginning on May 6th. We'll soon be celebrating his first solo show—in ceramics—at Show of Hands Gallery in Philadelphia, beginning on June 3 and ending July 24.

Bill will be creating or sharing original art in each issue of Juncture. Here, above, is a taste of things to come.

Sign up if you'd like to see (or read) more.

There are just four spaces now left at our inaugural memoir workshop. Please let us know if you are interested.

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LAB GIRL: my thoughts in the Chicago Tribune

This coming September, on an old farm in McClure, PA, a group of very-wow writers will be sitting at a big old table in a fabulously idiosyncratic barn talking about Hope Jahren's Lab Girl to kick off Juncture's inaugural memoir workshop.

My thoughts about this near-perfect memoir are here today, in the Chicago Tribune.

There are just four spaces now left in our workshop. If you're interested in the workshop or in the newsletter, please click on this link and let us know.

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Juncture Notes, our memoir newsletter, is out in the world.

If you'd like to be included in the distribution list, click on the first box right over there to the left.

Presto.

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