Milk, form, splinters, revolt

An embarrassment of riches

This week has been an embarrassment of riches: I got to speak with Szilvia Molnar about her haunting and visceral novel The Nursery. We talked about writing leaky tits, creating plot and movement in the mundane horror of the domestic, and the difference between the early days with an infant and “motherhood.”

"As soon as the baby arrives all of her choices disappear"

I also got to chat (live!) with the warm, funny and utterly brilliant

Maggie Smith

, who generously visited the memoir class I’m teaching Stanford. It was such a delight to hear her talk about bad questions (though to be clear, the students in my class had such GREAT questions), form and craft, the writing process, and poetics in memoir.

AND I got to chat with THE Leslie Jamison about her stunning and desirous new memoir, Splinters (that conversation is coming soon, stay tuned). I have been perfecting an interview question that is the inverse of the “what will this do to the men and children in your life” question, and of course both Maggie and Leslie had perfect answers to these questions.