“We all — no matter who we are — grow up being told that we are not allowed to say X or Y, we’re not allowed to speak of it, and certainly not to write it. But what happens when this thing, this “it,” is what makes us who we are? What happens when it belongs entirely to us, but (we have been led to believe) might bring shame to others? Who has the right to tell our stories?” -Elissa Altman
This July, join us for our virtual 2024 Summer Writing Retreat featuring three classes on fiction, memoir, and revision, plus lots of special events throughout the month, including a Saturday Craft Seminar with Steve Almond (July 13), lunchtime craft presentations by notable authors, meet-ups with fellow writers, dedicated writing time, and our Student Reading Night.
Our memoir class, taught by Elissa Altman, will focus on “Finding Clarity in Memoir: Permission, Story Ownership & Truth-Telling.” This class is for those at the start of a memoir project, are finding themselves stuck in the middle, or are ready to begin revising; and those running up against the most common elephant in the room – the belief that your story is not theirs to tell because someone or something has told them that.
Here’s what Elissa had to share with us:
Scribe: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you write? How did you come to writing?
Elissa Altman: I was born and raised in New York City in the 1970s, at a time of immense (and often violent) change; that was the macro. The micro, however, was what went on in my home at the time, and in the homes of my neighbors: small cruelties, quiet loves, wild betrayals, voracious infidelities. I found myself even as a young child in the position of being a “watcher” — someone who stood on the sidelines, out of view, but who absorbed absolutely everything that was going on around me in such a way that the mundane became my creative driver. I always knew that I would be a writer — I’ve been writing since I was very young, and came from a family of editors and newspaper people and poets — and I knew that I would be a memoirist and essayist, which is my chosen genre. Or perhaps I should say: it chose me. I don’t have much of a fictive impulse because: truth is stranger than fiction.
Scribe: You’re teaching the Memoir class and are focusing on Finding Clarity in Memoir: Permission, Story Ownership & Truth-Telling – can you tell us why you wanted to approach memoir from this angle?
EA: For the last eighteen months, my work has been focused on the issue of permission and story ownership, which is the elephant in the creative’s room. We all — no matter who we are — grow up being told that we are not allowed to say X or Y, we’re not allowed to speak of it, and certainly not to write it. But what happens when this thing, this “it,” is what makes us who we are? What happens when it belongs entirely to us, but (we have been led to believe) might bring shame to others? Who has the right to tell our stories? The result of teaching many, many workshops about Permission and Creativity is my new book, Permission: The New Memoirist and The Courage to Create, which is coming out in early 2025 from Godine Books.
Scribe: How does this topic resonate with your own work and your own development as a writer?
EA: This is what my work has been about — almost entirely — for the last decade. In my first memoir, Poor Mans Feast (a linear love story about two very different women who fall in love in midlife), I told a story about my grandmother, who, almost a century ago, walked out on my father and aunt when they were three and eight years old, respectively. She returned, but was made a pariah for the rest of her life. And of course, being a woman, no one ever asked WHY she left. This was common knowledge in my family, but no one spoke of it in the way my father had; he was obsessed by it. My book came out in 2013, and by early 2014, I had been excised entirely from my family for telling this story. It has taken me a decade, a lot of grief counseling, and a lot more writing, to understand how shame kills, how very tribal it tends to be. And this is what bore the book.
Scribe: Has there been a moment of epiphany in terms of your work, when you thought, “This is it! Now I know what I’m doing?” How long did that feeling last?
EA: Never ever. I believe that creatives cannot get too comfortable; we cannot rest on laurels. I suppose after four books, I should have long since had that epiphany, and there were times when I felt very good about something I finished. But, as my friend, the late humorist David Rakoff once said: don’t get too comfortable. I don’t. Hubris is not the creative’s friend!
Scribe: What piece of advice do you find yourself giving to writers again and again?
EA: Be generous. Be a good literary citizen. Be humble. Work hard. Always understand that there is more to learn, no matter what. Literary trend is just that: trend. And read everything you can get your hands on.
Scribe: How would you finish this sentence: If the students in my class take away one thing from the four weeks, I hope it’s:
EA: The understanding that there is magic in the mundane. This is where the best stories are.
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Thanks, Elissa!
Elissa Altman is the award-winning author of the memoirs Motherland, Treyf, Poor Man’s Feast, and her upcoming hybrid memoir about permission and creativity, On Permission, coming in winter 2025. A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Connecticut Book Award, and Maine Literary Award for memoir, Altman’s essays have appeared in Orion, Narrative, On Being, O: The Oprah Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and the Washington Post, where her column, Feeding My Mother, ran for a year. Altman writes and speaks widely on the intersection of permission and the creative spirit, and has appeared live on the TEDx stage and at the Public Theater in New York.
Click here to learn more about Elissa Altman’s upcoming memoir class during the 2024 Summer Writing Retreat.