Hi friends. We made it.
Upcoming events
Reminder: join us for Generating Essay Ideas on Friday February 14 12-2pm PT/3pm-5pm ET. You need to register for this seminar here, and if you can’t attend live, you’ll get the recording the weekend after the seminar. Paid subscribers, get your discount code here.
Priyanka Mattoo, author of the memoir Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones, will join us live for a salon Monday February 24 at 10am PT/ 1pm ET. This event is for paid subscribers of the newsletter, and will also be recorded for paid subscribers who can’t attend. Link to the virtual event will be sent out morning of.
Amy Shearn, author of the forthcoming novel Animal Instinct, will join us for a live salon Monday March 24 at 10am PT/ 1pm ET. Again, will be recorded for paid subscribers who can’t attend live. Same deal, link to the virtual event will be sent out morning of.
This week’s writing prompt
As a little treat for every paid subscriber who makes this community possible, I share writing prompts most Fridays. These prompts are just to get you going, whether you feel stuck on a current project, want to explore writing in new directions, or just want to write something this weekend for yourself but don’t know how to begin. There is no right or wrong way to do this.
If you want access to this and other prompts, plus upcoming author salons and weekly recs, you can always upgrade your subscription here.
Please keep these prompts within our community. They have been acquired over many years of teaching, and I use them in my classes. I offer them as a thank you to paid subscribers for the ongoing support.
Braiding history
In a class I’m teaching, we’ve been talking a lot about braiding in memoir— braiding stands of time and memory, braiding in research, criticism, philosophical musing, and self-reflection. Something I think about a lot is the way in which great memoir functions as an embodied history of time and place— a diversification of the archive of experience, but also proof of what living is like during a given a time, and how it is connected to the history that surrounds us. One reason it’s so important to keep writing and making art, even when the world is as grim as it is right now.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the legacy of Black feminist writers, and this week’s prompt is inspired by Camille T. Dungy’s “From Dirt” (if you love it as much as I do, also get her book Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden).