AWP Offsite: In the Raw: On the Complexities of Exposing Yourself and Your Family in Memoir

We know creating is inherently risky, but what really happens after you publish a very vulnerable and revealing memoir? Not only might you have shared your own deepest flaws, but the work will have included other family members or former family members. Whether they betrayed you, supported you, or were bystanders, they will be deeply affected by your portrayal of them. On top of these considerations, you must eventually face the challenge of moving on creatively. What do you focus on next, now that you’ve so wholly exposed yourself? Join four accomplished writers of memoir and fiction as they read from brand-new forthcoming work and discuss strategies for navigating these creative complexities. Gina Frangello’s memoir, Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason (Counterpoint), was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and BookPage, and made numerous “Best of 2021” lists including at Lithub, BookPage, and The Chicago Review of Books. Gina is also the author of four books of fiction, and her sixth book, on Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, is forthcoming from IG Publishing’s “Bookmarked” series. Now a lead editor at Row House, Gina also founded both the independent press Other Voices Books and the fiction section of the popular online literary community The Nervous Breakdown. Her column, “Not the Norm,” runs on the Psychology Today blog, and she runs Circe Consulting, a full-service company for writers, with Emily Rapp Black. Gina can be found at www.ginafrangello.org. Joshua Mohr is the author of five novels, including Damascus, which The New York Times called “Beat-poet cool.” He’s also written Some Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine’s 10 Terrific reads of 2009, and All This Life, winner of the Northern California Book Award. Termite Parade was an editor’s choice on the New York Times Best Seller List. His latest book is a memoir, Model Citizen, and it was an Amazon Editors’ Pick. In his Hollywood life, he’s sold projects to AMC, ITV, and Amblin Entertainment. Jeannine Ouellette’s memoir, The Part That Burns, was a 2021 Kirkus Best 100 Indie Book and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award in Women's Literature, with starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. Her essays and fiction have appeared widely in literary journals including Masters Review, North American Review, Narrative, Los Angeles Review of Books, and more. She teaches writing at the University of Minnesota and through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, Catapult, and Elephant Rock, a creative writing program she founded in 2012. She is working on her first novel. Joanna Rakoff is the author of the international bestselling memoir My Salinger Year and the bestselling novel A Fortunate Age, winner of the Goldberg Prize for Fiction and the Elle Readers’ Prize. Rakoff’s books have been translated into twenty languages, and the film adaptation of My Salinger Year opened in theaters worldwide in 2021 and is now streaming. She has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Sewanee, Bread Loaf, Jerome Foundation, Authors’ Guild, PEN, Ragdale Foundation, Art OMI/Ledig House, and Saltonstall; and has taught at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, and Aspen Words. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, O: The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Elle, Porter, and elsewhere, and her new memoir, The Fifth Passenger, is forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2024.

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