“This is the beauty of memoir: it can make the alien familiar and the familiar surprising.” —Mallary Tenore Tarpley
On Wednesday, September 17, Mallary Tenore Tarpley is teaching a class for the WLT called “How to Blend Personal Narrative and Reportage in Essays and Books.” In this class, students will learn how to explore complex topics and enhance their voice through a mix of reporting, research, and narrative.
Mallary Tenore Tarpley is an assistant professor of practice at The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media and McCombs School of Business, where she teaches writing and reporting courses for undergraduate and graduate students. Mallary specializes in a variety of topics, including longform feature writing, creative nonfiction, solutions journalism and nonprofit journalism. A longtime journalist, Mallary’s articles and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Tampa Bay Times, Harvard University’s Nieman Storyboard and more. Mallary’s debut nonfiction book, SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, has recently been published by Simon & Schuster’s Simon Element imprint and is now available for purchase. The book blends immersive reporting, emerging science and social history around eating disorders alongside Mallary’s own harrowing journey from a childhood with anorexia to her present-day reality as a mother in recovery. While working on the book, Mallary received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support her reporting and writing.
Here’s what Mallary had to share with us:
Who are your earliest influences? What people and books made you a writer?
Mallary Tenore Tarpley: I always loved the written word, and as an only child who lived in a neighborhood without many kids my age, I spent a lot of time reading and writing by myself. I would climb the Japanese maple tree in my front yard, where I wrote short stories and journal entries. I read countless books there, propping my body up against the strongest limb and losing myself in other worlds. I devoured The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Tuck Everlasting, Bridge to Terabithia, and A Wrinkle in Time, wishing I could make my favorite characters come to life.
I pretended to be the protagonist from Harriet the Spy. In the book, Harriet is an eleven-year-old aspiring writer who spies on her classmates, friends, and neighbors and writes down observations in her notebook. I saw myself in her, as a young girl who was about the same age and had the same dream of becoming a famous author. Like Harriet, with binoculars in hand, I would often spy on my neighbors from high up in my tree and write down activities I deemed suspicious. (Man walking dog stopped and looked up into the sky . . . Car drove down the street slowly . . . Truck just sped by without any apparent reason.) I’d jot down these observations (and a slew of random license plate numbers) in my fluorescent pink Lisa Frank notebook. My neighbors came to know me as Mallary the Spy, and they found my detective skills endearing.
What writing challenges have you faced? What have these challenges taught you about your process?
MTT: I used to write personal essays with tidy endings because I thought that’s what readers wanted and because I was afraid to expose the hard truths in my own narrative. There was a disconnect, though, between the narrative I was sharing with the world and the one I was living out behind closed doors. In more recent years (and especially once I started writing my new memoir SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery), I made the decision to make my writing as authentic as possible. This required courage and vulnerability, but I found that it made my writing stronger and opened up more points of relatability for readers. Instead of saying I was “fully recovered” from my childhood eating disorder, for instance, I started to be more open about the reality that my disorder remains a vulnerability and is still something I contend with as a woman in ongoing recovery. This shift has been liberating.
From your perspective, what’s the most rewarding part about being a writer?
MTT: I love knowing that my writing can help others feel seen and heard. Memoir writing is like holding up a mirror to yourself and your readers, with hopes that they can see themselves reflected in your story and ultimately feel less alone. Even if they can’t relate to your experiences exactly, the hope is that they can see glimpses of themselves and realize something new about their own life story. This is the beauty of memoir: it can make the alien familiar and the familiar surprising. To engage in this type of writing is a real gift, and it’s a reminder that memoirs can have a far greater impact than we may have initially imagined.
Who do you write for?
MTT: I write for people who have lived experience with the topics I care most deeply about: eating disorders, grief, loss, parenting, and navigating the ups and downs of recovery. In reality, that encapsulates a pretty wide audience, given that a lot of these experiences are universal. I’m particularly keen on writing for people who have eating disorders or who are in recovery from them. There’s not nearly enough literature out there for folks who are navigating what I call “the middle place” between acute sickness and full recovery from an eating disorder, and I find myself writing more and more for those who find themselves in this underdiscussed but populous place.
What do you hope writers will learn from your course?
MTT: I hope writers will learn to strengthen their voice, fine-tune ideas for personal writing projects, and better understand the ways in which reportage can enhance personal narrative and vice versa. Writers will learn how to seamlessly blend reporting, research, and narrative in a way that informs and engages readers rather than giving them whiplash as they move from one to the other. Writers will also come away with confidence and clarity about their ability to take that next step in whatever writing project they’re pursuing (or want to pursue).
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Thanks, Mallary!
Click here to learn more about Mallary’s upcoming class.
