“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.” —Mallary Tenore Tarpley
On Wednesday, January 28, Mallary Tenore Tarpley will teach “How to Write About Family Members in Memoir & Personal Essays.” In this class, students will explore the tricky task of writing about family members in narrative nonfiction. They will learn how to interview relatives and explore hard truths; how to show loved ones’ humanity; how to write about strained relationships; how to reckon with conflicting memories, and so much more.
Mallary Tenore Tarpley is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches journalism classes in the Moody College of Communication and writing classes at the McCombs School of Business. Her debut memoir, SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, which was published by Simon & Schuster’s Simon Element imprint in August 2025, explores the under-discussed complexities of eating disorders and recovery from them. The book is equal parts memoir and journalism, and it weaves together Mallary’s own narrative with perspectives from clinicians, researchers, and others with lived experience. In 2023, Mallary received a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support the science-related reporting in the book, specifically around the neurobiological and genetic aspects of eating disorders. Previously, Mallary was the associate director of UT Austin’s Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, an international training and outreach center for journalists. Prior to UT Austin, Mallary was the executive director of the nonprofit Images & Voices of Hope (ivoh), where she developed a storytelling genre called Restorative Narrative — stories that show how people and communities are finding meaningful pathways forward in the aftermath of trauma. Mallary started her career at The Poynter Institute, a world-renowned journalism think tank. As managing editor of the Institute’s website, Poynter.org, she wrote and edited stories about the media industry and interviewed hundreds of journalists and authors. Mallary’s articles and personal essays about eating disorders have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, TIME Magazine, and Teen Vogue, among other publications. She maintains a weekly newsletter, Write at the Edge, featuring writing tips and best practices. Mallary holds a bachelor’s degree from Providence College and a master’s of fine arts in nonfiction writing from Goucher College. She lives in the Austin area with her husband and two young children.
Here’s what Mallary had to share with us:
Who are your earliest influences? What people and books made you a writer?
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?
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. While I wrote my book, I was reminded of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, in which she writes of the main character Edna Pontellier: “At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life — that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.” As a memoirist, I wanted to convey this dual life on the page and show how, by the book’s end, my outward and inward lives were no longer in conflict.
From your perspective, what’s the most rewarding part about being a writer?
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?
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. That encapsulates a wide audience, given that a lot of these experiences are universal. I’m 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 increasingly writing for those who find themselves in this underdiscussed but populous place.
What do you hope writers will learn from your course?
I hope writers who take this class will gain confidence in their ability to effectively write about family members. Students will learn how to decide which family members to write about; how to interview family members and explore hard truths; how to show loved ones’ full humanity by writing about their flaws and strengths; how to write about strained relationships; how to wrestle with conflicting memories from family members; how (and whether) to show a copy to family members prior to publication, and more. They’ll come away with practical writing prompts, tips, and skills that they can start applying immediately.
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Thanks, Mallary!
Click here to learn more about Mallary’s upcoming class.
