(Writing With Immediacy in Memoir.)

But now Grandpa—we’ve been on terms of endearment for three decades and counting—knows that my traditional Cuban father tried to ban me from playing baseball after I got my first period. That’s what you get for becoming a señorita.

I doubt my athletic exploits will stick in Grandpa’s mind. But will he be thinking about that first period the next time I visit him in Florida?

And he hasn’t even made it to the major depression I went through when our daughter turned six, the same age I’d been when we were kicked out of our home in Cuba. One night a guard arrived unexpectedly with our exit papers. We’d been waiting three years as gusanos, worms, the revolution’s term for people like us who were trying to leave the country. We suffered insults, turned over our house and what little else we owned to the revolution, and left friends and family behind we knew we’d never see again.

Will my father-in-law’s still-sharp mind focus on that part of the story or the parts where I reveal more than he and, let’s face it, even I expected? Will he think I’m weak for having suffered from depression? Stupid for telling the world how my ovaries impacted my baseball career? Will he feel embarrassed for his son and grandchildren, whose privacy has taken a hit because of my writing affliction?

I worked on Property of the Revolution: From a Cuban Barrio to a New Hampshire Mill Town for many years, off and on, and nonstop for the last three. I thought carefully about my goals for the book, what to put in, what to leave out, story structure, chapter titles, Cuban history, US politics, quotations vs italics, and, of course, commas.

What never crossed my mind was that my menstruation history would one day end up somewhere in Grandpa’s head. That doesn’t seem fair to either of us.

Grandpa isn’t the only reader I’m worried about. I have neighbors, acquaintances, and friends who are quite analytical, private, introverted, and measured. They’re also super punctual, by the way. Some of them have gone out of their way to tell me how much they loved the book. Behind their praise, I sometimes hear the faintest question: Why would you reveal those things?

No one ever told me to think about those questions prior to publication. During the writing years, I was asking other questions, like, would the book ever be finished, would it ever see the inside of a bookstore? I felt entirely alone, as if I were groping my way through an unlit house in search of something vital—a word, an idea, a memory—that might or might not even exist. Those worries kept me far from the reality of how naked I’d feel one day when the book was in front of readers—real human beings.

When I started, I didn’t even want to write a memoir. I had wanted to write a novel based on our family’s experiences as refugees and fledgling Cuban Americans. But an acquaintance with years of experience in the publishing world told me, back when the idea of writing a book first started toying with me, that a memoir would be easier to write and possibly easier to sell. She was wrong.

Click to continue.

I didn’t know many people in publishing then, so I set off to write a memoir. I realized early on that telling truths that I’d kept hidden from myself most of my life—not just my own truths but my family’s—and respecting historical facts were going to clobber me. I also knew those challenges might even make an author out of me, if I could pull it off.

As a journalist, I was comfortable anchoring our family’s story in historical events, the 1959 revolution, The Bay of Pigs Invasion, The Missile Crisis, the Mariel Boatlift, the Elián González controversy, etc. But I wanted readers to understand how those events impacted us personally. I wanted them to feel what we felt when the nightly news jumped out of the television set and landed on our sofa.

To bring them into that intimate space, I needed to earn their trust. I think that’s why I wrote about the dicey truths that another writer might have omitted. My reader, I hoped, would recognize the difficulty of sharing deeply personal moments and value my story even more as a result.

It’s a calculus all writers make, consciously or not. We are peeling away the layers of our soul with each word. Our ideas, our values, our mistakes and idiosyncrasies are all up for analysis, ridicule, and, with luck, appreciation for offering something that makes a reader feel human, see the world differently, or takes them somewhere they’ve never been and won’t want to leave.

That’s what some readers have told me my memoir did for them. Hearing their reactions makes the years of work, the doubts and frustrations, the sacrificed privacy, the all-nighters, the no shower days, the tears—because who doesn’t cry when they’re writing a book—worth it.

Those moments have reminded me again of the battle cry my mother taught me when I was young. Ponte guapa. Make yourself brave. I write about the motto’s impact on my life in my memoir, and I talk about the phrase when I do presentations. Recently, in a high school Spanish class, a student asked if I thought the meaning of the phrase had changed over the course of my life. Did ponte guapa mean the same thing to me now as it did when I was a young, confused, refugee surrounded by uncertainty and loss?

I know, right? He was only 17 years old. His question made me realize that ponte guapa, when I was young, inspired me to be tough, to not cry, to not look at the hard or ugly things that were happening to me, to us.

Today, ponte guapa inspires me to look at the hard and ugly things that happened to me, to us, to cry if need be, and to not be afraid of sharing any of it with readers, including Grandpa. I am a memoirist. That’s what we do. That’s how we’re brave.

Check out Ana Hebra Flaster’s Property of the Revolution here:

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In this interview, Sonita discusses the vulnerability that came with writing her new memoir, Sonita, the difference between writing a book and writing music, and more.

Name: Sonita Alizada
Literary agent: Watermark Agency
Book title: Sonita
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: July 8, 2025
Genre/category: Memoir
Elevator pitch: Nearly 15 million girls, including many in the U.S., are forced into marriage each year. Each of these girls has a price tag—and a story. Sonita Alizada was almost sold twice. Her price tag was $9,000. The money her family received for selling her would pay for her brother’s wife.

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What prompted you to write this book?

What prompted me to write this book was a mix of pain, purpose, and a promise I made to myself.

I grew up in an environment where girls were often silenced and sold, and I knew that if I survived, I had to use my voice for those who couldn’t. This book is more than just my story, it’s the story of million of girls like me, whose dreams were interrupted but not erased. After some time of performing music and sharing my message through rap, I felt it was time to put it all into words, sharing my story from when I was about 5 years old until now. I wanted people to know what it means to be told you’re worthless—and what it means to fight that lie every single day. I wanted to tell some people that they should not say sorry when they hear my story, but to say that nothing is impossible, to say and believe that many other Sonitas out there could have the same or even better ending if they are seen and hear. 

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

It took me about five years to go from the first idea to the final manuscript and yes, the idea changed a lot along the way.

At first, I thought I was just writing down memories so I wouldn’t forget where I came from. But the more I wrote, the more I wanted to know/share, so I realized I was also writing for every girl who has been told “no.” I started with a focus on my personal journey from escaping child marriage, becoming a rapper, but over time, it became much more than that. I wanted to explore how music gave me power, how silence shaped me, and how resilience is not a single act but a lifelong process. The book evolved into a story not just about survival, but about transformation.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Yes, there were many surprises and learning moments especially how long and emotional the publishing process can be.

One of the biggest surprises was how deeply involved I needed to be, even after writing the manuscript. I thought the hard part was over once I finished the draft but then came editing again and again where I had to relive painful moments and find new ways to express them with clarity and more detailed. I also learned how important it is to trust your voice, especially when others suggest changes. Another learning moment was realizing how much a good team matters like my editors, agent, and supporters helped shape the book into something far more powerful than I could’ve done alone.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Yes, one of the biggest surprises was how hard it was to write about things I thought I had already processed.

I assumed that since I had spoken publicly and rapped about parts of my story, writing them down would be easy. But sitting alone with the silence of the page brought up emotions I didn’t expect. Grief, anger, even guilt. I also discovered that writing a book requires a different kind of vulnerability. In music, I could use rhythm and metaphor to express pain, but in the book, I had to slow down and dig deeper. Another surprise was how much healing happened in the process. Some chapters were so difficult I had to take breaks for days. But through that, I found clarity and even forgiveness, for myself and for others.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers walk away from this book with a deeper understanding of what it means to fight for your voice in a world that tries to silence you.

This isn’t just a story about me, it’s about the girls who are still hidden, still being forced into silence, marriage, or invisibility. I want readers to feel empathy, yes, but also urgency. I hope they feel inspired to challenge injustice, to believe in the power of their own voice, and to support others who are fighting to be heard. And for those who’ve been through pain or oppression, I hope they see this book as proof that healing is possible and that dreams are worth chasing, even when the world tells you otherwise.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

My one piece of advice is: Write like no one is watching at first.

Don’t worry about sounding perfect or being accepted. Just tell the truth. The raw, messy, emotional truth. That’s where the power is. You can always shape it later, but if you censor yourself too early, you’ll lose the heart of what you’re trying to say. Also, be patient. Writing takes time, not just to finish the pages, but to understand yourself through them. Some days it will hurt. Other days it will heal. But keep going. Your story matters more than you know.

The post Sonita Alizada: Resilience Is Not a Single Act but a Lifelong Process appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Princiotti shares what inspired her book, the first chat she had with her agent, and more. 

Name: Nora Princiotti 
Literary agent: Anthony Mattero (CAA) 
Book title: Hit Girls: Britney, Taylor, Beyoncé, and the Women Who Built Pop’s Shiniest Decade 
Publisher: Ballantine Books 
Release date: June 17, 2025 
Genre/category: Nonfiction, music, pop-culture 
Elevator pitch for the book: A nostalgic and funny rumination on how female artists in the 2000s redefined pop stardom. 

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What prompted you to write this book? 

How devastating to start a Writer’s Digest Q&A with a cliché, but I really did write this book because I wanted to read it. There’s so much close reading and analysis of the current era of women in pop that I get so much from as both a writer and a reader, and I wanted to have that for the era I grew up on. 

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process? 

The first chat I had with my agent, Anthony Mattero, about how much fun a book about aughties pop music could be was nearly five years ago, which is hard to believe. In earnest, it took about two years from medium-fleshed-out idea/proposal to publication. The idea—to write about my favorite artists of the 2000s and how they changed the nature of pop stardom—didn’t change much, but the chapters wound up coalescing around three themes of genre, technology, and celebrity that helped provide structure and clarity. 

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title? 

This is embarrassing, but I didn’t understand how galleys are put together and had a brief hysterical episode when I thought my index was completely ruined. 

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?  

Going into my first draft, I assumed the way for me to get it done would be to take it slow and steady, writing a little every day. I found pretty quickly that I wasn’t building any momentum. The way I’d get work done was to spend whole weekends writing or take some extra vacation days and get in a groove. 

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?  

Of course, I hope readers will come away with a deeper respect for the art of being a pop star. But in total honesty, the thing I hope most of all for my readers is that the book makes them laugh and makes them feel confident the next time they go to bar trivia. 

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be? 

Have the elevator pitch version of your thesis nailed from the start. (I have yet to do this.)

The post Nora Princiotti: Nail Your Elevator Pitch appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Bonnie discusses the process of putting together her new book, Too Good to Get Married, how long it took to go from idea to publication, and more.

Name: Bonnie Yochelson
Literary agent: Albert LaFarge Literary Agency
Book title: Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen
Publisher: Fordham University Press, Empire State Editions
Release date: June 3, 2025
Genre/category: Biography, photography, Gender Studies, New York City history
Previous titles: Jacob A. Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half, A Complete Catalogue of His Photographs; Alfred Stieglitz New York; Rediscovering Jacob Riis, Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn of the Century New York; Esther Bubley On Assignment; New York Changing: Rephotographing Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York,” Photographs by Berenice Abbott and Douglas Levere; Jacob A. Riis, Phaidon 55 series; Berenice Abbott: Changing New York; Pictorialism into Modernism: The Clarence H. White School of Photography (co-author); New York to Hollywood, Photography by Karl Struss (co-author)
Elevator pitch: Explore Gilded Age New York through the lens of Alice Austen, who captured the social rituals of New York’s leisured class and the bustling streets of the modern city. Celebrated as a queer artist, she was this and much more

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What prompted you to write this book?

In the 2010s, Historic Richmond Town (HRT) digitized and catalogued Austen’s collection of more than 7,000 prints and negatives. As an art historian and curator, I have specialized in studying and interpreting archives of well-known but little studied New York photographers. The accessibility of the collection plus the need for a new book made Austen a natural subject for me.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication?

So long!

And did the idea change during the process?

I agreed to collaborate with HRT on a book as early as 2013, but a complete catalog of Jacob Riis’s photographs and a cascade of Riis exhibitions kept me busy until 2017. When I began research on Austen, I found that there were not only the photographs but a mountain of Austen family memorabilia and a trove of letters at the Alice Austen House—a lot to digest. Two former HRT curators who had worked on Austen for years generously offered their support, which greatly improved the book but prolonged the research phase. There was also the complex issue of gender history, which was new to me. Fordham University Press waited four years for the manuscript, for which I am very grateful.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

My previous books were commissioned by museums. This was my first book that was subject to peer review —twice: by the Gotham Center (CUNY Grad Center) that offered me a writing fellowship, and again by Fordham. The input from scholars in several fields was much needed and fantastic for me.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

There were many factual discoveries. For example, Austen claimed that her father returned to his native England, abandoning her mother when she was a baby. Austen’s father, it turns out, lived in Brooklyn and was buried in his family’s plot in Greenwood Cemetery!

The biggest mystery was this: Austen took her now-famous lesbian photographs before the concept of lesbianism was understood. What was going on? I found a plausible explanation through carefully studying the chronology of the photographs and the letters and understanding how American woman began challenging Victorian feminine norms in the late 1890s.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

Austen was a strong-willed, talented woman, full of contradictions. Loyal to her privileged class, she explored her sexuality and found happiness in a lifelong partnership with a woman. She left almost no written testimony, but her photographs, properly understood, offer a fascinating portrait of Gilded Age American life.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

This book was more challenging and rewarding than I anticipated, coming at is did at the end of my career. I am grateful that I was able to see it through and proud of the result. Advice? No thoughts on that.

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(The Art of Imagination and Finding Voice in Memoir.)

I knew all of this and still, writing Flood—a memoir that aimed to act as a house that could hold the story of my husband’s affair, the birth of our twins, and the clownish care I received in response to an aggressive tumor in my right breast—I fell prey to doubt. Doubt was delivered through other people’s opinions in writers’ workshops that I charged on my credit card and also in graduate school where earning an MFA required producing an effective manuscript. The stakes felt high. I could not fail in the telling of my own story.

The overwhelming advice I received was to write the entire memoir in past tense. But I wrote it in present tense. This isn’t happening now an advisor wrote on my manuscript with a red pen.

There is nothing more immediate than bad news about your health. Far less immediate is writing about that news and having it become a book. Or not having it become a book. What I did have were two legal-sized boxes filled with past-tense drafts. Each was a natural evolution of the one before and also not right. Immediacy—that elemental thing that keeps a reader turning pages—was missing, like a house without a foundation.

Immediacy, urgency, and pacing are sometimes used interchangeably when describing a piece of writing, but they are different. The pacing of a story is the speed in which it travels. Urgency is the engine that drives it. Immediacy is akin to prioritizing. In a moment of crisis, there is no time for reflection. There is only do this now. For me, this was whatever the moment required: couples counseling, caring for two babies, chemotherapy—crying.

The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard had a great deal to say about immediacy. The entirety of his Intuition of the Instant from 1932 is devoted to unpicking Gaston Roupnel’s dramatic novel Siloë. Specifically Roupnel’s idea that “time has but one reality, the reality of the instant.”

The reality I was working so hard to describe was a series of instants lived underwater. But first I had to see the waves.

The following is a three-step blueprint that I developed for Flood:

1. I printed the complete manuscript and laid it out, chapter by chapter, on the floor.
2. Reading the last paragraph of chapter one followed by the first paragraph of chapter two, I asked myself are these paragraphs in conversation with each other.
3. When they were, immediacy was present. When they weren’t, I considered the penultimate paragraph of chapter one. I often found that the last paragraph of any chapter could be eliminated.

With my manuscript spilled all over the living room, I dug through a diary I’d written contemporaneously. What was remarkable was the effusion of exclamation points: Things are great! I shaved my head! The babies cried all day! I rarely use exclamation points. Their presence in the diary was like a series of red flags around a construction site.

Click to continue.

I excavated those exclamation points as if I was digging for the first time. Rewriting the series of medical events in present tense and letting flashbacks remain in past tense resulted in the manuscript reading organically. The wave of one event led to another. A house appeared before my eyes.

Bachelard’s understanding of Roupnel’s novel is concerned with the sensation of immediate comprehension, “a moment when we suddenly understand our own message.” It’s in these flashes of insight that we know how to behave. Why when we cut our thumb slicing cucumbers for dinner, we don’t keep slicing cucumbers but instantly determine what’s appropriate: bandage in the bathroom or stitches at the hospital.

When I adopted past tense, something vital was lost. It was as if I was writing my way out instead of writing my way in. As Roupnel wrote in Siloë, “It is in the virtue of this present alone—in it and through it—that we become aware of existence. There is an absolute identity between the feeling of the present and the feeling of life.”

As the authority on our own work—even if it means going against the advice of seasoned writers we admire and respect—we have to be willing to swim. Past tense or present tense, fast or slow pacing, sustained or relaxed urgency, all of these are secondary to the immediate.

When Flood was accepted for publication, I burned the boxes of wholly past-tense drafts in my backyard. Then the rain came.

Check out Christine Kalafus’ Flood here:

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“Nothing extraordinary has ever happened to me.”

“I don’t think anyone would be interested in reading about that.”

These are some common hesitations shared by nonfiction writers worried that they have not had remarkable enough lives to engage readers’ attention. Yet most of our lives are not comprised of a series of extravagant events, but rather a compilation of small moments that nonetheless have large personal and political impacts.

(6 Types of Personal Essays for Writers to Try.)

My latest book, Abbreviate, is a small collection of small essays that examines big ideas, like how the injustice and violence of girlhood leads women to accept and even claim small spaces and stories. Though the essays in this collection focus on everyday experiences—probing the girlhood play of Polly Pocket and planetariums, strobing with a sleepover blacklight illuminating teenage magic, and ricocheting with the regret and rage of adult women whose lives have been constellated by harm—it is this commonality that reinforces the significance of the stories.

When I began writing Abbreviate, I wanted to write stories from my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood that others deemed too small to be significant. These were the childhood experiences I tried to tell adults, only to be told little girls should be seen and not heard. These were the stories from my teenage years that shaped me irrevocably, but were deemed too commonplace to warrant much attention. And these were the experiences from my adulthood shared by many women yet silenced by a sexist society. Growing up, I shared many experiences with girls and women around me, as well as the experience of being told our stories were too small to matter. And so, it was these small stories that I wanted to praise.

~

Many readers of nonfiction turn to the genre looking for connection. While we certainly read to learn about lives unlike our own, we also read for the familiar, to see something of ourselves reflected in the pages, to witness a world that makes us feel a sense of unity rather than isolation. There is an inherent power in engaging with a stranger’s story and thinking, “Yes, I’ve felt that way too” or “I thought I was the only one.” We read nonfiction to feel a sense of wholeness, to feel as though we are a part of the larger human experience.

If we only focus our work on the extraordinary, however, we risk losing this quality. We risk alienating our readers. We risk missing the point of the genre entirely—the poignancy and power of the everyday. And we risk alienating ourselves from the narratives of our own lives, thinking instead that we are somehow not living or writing well if we are not exceptional.

Part of the craft of writing creative nonfiction is retraining ourselves to notice and appreciate small moments in our lives. Contemporary culture tends to favor extremes in news headlines, social media, and movies, so it can seem as though storytelling requires dramatic events. But there is as much narrative tension in the small moments of our lives as there is in these extremes, perhaps even more so, for what is higher stakes than the truth?

Learning to cultivate a sense of curiosity about small daily moments can begin anytime. Going through old photos, listening to music, reading old letters or emails, or reminiscing about particular periods in your life will naturally produce them. You do not need epiphanic revelation or a sudden stroke of artistic inspiration to locate a meaningful memory, image, or emotion. If a particular moment in your life, however small, is one that brought you pleasure, heartache, intrigue, or simply stands out strongly in your memory, then this is a good sign that it will do the same for readers. What matters is your willingness to notice, your belief that the minutia of your life matters, and your ability to reflect on what larger truths these small stories reveal.

For example, while Abbreviate contains extreme events, the majority of moments throughout the collection are brief flashes. Dramatic events like domestic violence, sexual assault, and abuse by authority figures juxtapose with small events like childhood games, teenage school projects, and adult trips to museums. The large events are certainly important to the narrative, but the smaller moments are equally important, perhaps even more so because of their unexpected narrative weight. While it was easy to reflect on significant moments of narrative tension in my life, it was more powerful to reflect on forgotten moments, and I found that lingering memories of elementary school classrooms and middle school dances gave way to more varied memories with greater thematic significance.

When we write about extremes, there’s often little opportunity for thematic surprise. Writing about my middle school principal running off with a student, for example, expectedly leads to outrage, shock, violation. But writing about small moments provides narrative flexibility and many opportunities for thematic exploration. Writing about building a life-size model of a refrigerator for a middle school project, for example, foreshadowed the disordered eating many girls I grew up with experienced later as adults. Surprising yourself with the power of the small will naturally surprise your reader.

Click to continue.

Small moments can also lend themselves to creating stronger thematic connections. For example, when writing about domestic violence, which eventually led to my aunt’s husband running over his ex-wife, an image of my aunt teaching me to play with stomp rockets, launching them up into the air and far away to safety provided more interesting images, metaphoric opportunity, and thematic resonance, than writing about my uncle directly. Since I was a child when this event took place, it also makes sense to write about childhood memories of play, rather than the adult events I didn’t fully understand at the time. When reflecting on my uncle, the memory of his violence always surfaces, but it was remembering my childhood play that allowed me access to writing about this difficult subject and with a more nuanced approach.

Once you have determined which small moments were impactful, it is then time to use them thematically. Remember, readers engage with nonfiction not simply for the plot, but for a larger reflection about the human experience, so it is not enough simply to share specific memories. Instead, you must work to make greater meaning beyond these memories, to use these recollections as the impetus for or the lens through which you create deeper reflection.

Many times, the small experiences or images that you have chosen to write about will lead you directly to larger themes. You might find that writing about quilting with your grandmother as a child lends itself to themes about piecing together your family history as an adult. You might find that writing about playing with dolls as a girl lends itself to larger themes about motherhood. Moving beyond the memory can be as simple as asking yourself what this memory taught you about the world or how this memory foreshadowed what was to come later in your life.

Other times, you might find that your themes come first. When we begin with themes rather than plot, it can sometimes be difficult to know how best to illustrate these themes. But turning to the small moments in our lives can give us a sense of direction. For example, in Abbreviate, I wanted to examine the rise of sexism in America, as well as the ways women have been erased from history. I did so by focusing on small moments from my past like how elementary boys learned bullying techniques from adult men or the ways a girlhood visit to a planetarium revealed few women constellating the sky. Reverse engineering allows us to sift through the card catalogs of our minds to locate specific examples that might illustrate the larger points we are trying to make. Remember, these memories don’t need to speak directly to the themes. Sometimes it is best if they provide emotional weight, rather than direct commentary.

To create deeper meaning from your memories, you can also either implement direct comparisons or utilize juxtapositions. You might share specific small moments to reflect directly on a related topic. For example, in Abbreviate, I share stories of being required to apologize, smile, or hug people even when I didn’t want to in order to reflect on the ways girls and women are taught to conceal their true emotions for the ease of others. Direct comparisons strengthen both the specific memory and the larger thematic weight, allowing readers to fully engage with each.

On the other hand, you can also create deeper meaning from your memories by using stark contrast. By juxtaposing a specific memory with a seemingly unrelated larger theme, you employ the element of surprise for readers, moving the reading experience beyond expectation and toward originality. For example, describing learning to play Dungeons & Dragons in the wake of our current political climate allowed me to reflect on the ways men seek to control even women’s minds and imaginations. Contrast allows both you and your reader to move beyond the expected, and to be reminded of the power of the genre and the ability of our lives to move in surprising ways.

~

“I can’t believe I never noticed that before.”

“Even after all these years, I still remember that.”

“I never realized how much that tiny moment impacted me.”

Growing up, many of the girls and women around me believed their stories and selves too small. And yet, if we had only shared our small stories, we might have understood their significance in our lives and in the lives of others, might have seen our connection, might have realized our individual and collective power. By claiming space on the page, we might have learned to claim space in the real world, might have demanded more for ourselves and each other, might have stretched ourselves in search of all that we desired and might one day achieve. In recognizing the power of the small, we might have recognized our ability to tell stories larger than we ever imagined.

Check out Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s Abbreviate here:

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(The Messy House of Memoir.)

I bucked any remaining social anxiety that has lingered since my son Christopher died nine years ago and set up a meeting with a woman I didn’t know, to gather up some perspective since she is further down the book publishing path. As with my grieving journey, it has benefited me to look to the women walking ahead. I arranged to meet with her at a local coffee shop. Watching her take a sip of her latte after swirling it with cream, I listened to her describe how she shifted her life’s course from being miserable in her banking career to becoming the writer she dreamt she’d become since she was a little girl. It turns out, that to write, publish, and market a book, although increasingly commonplace (in fact, I’m beginning to wonder if writing a memoir has become a rite of passage for all midlife women) throws you into a world without a roadmap.

I took a gulp of my americano and looked across at her wizened hazel eyes and recognized immediately that she too had embarked without having any idea what it would look like. I soaked up her validation as we agreed upon the importance of asking for direction and support along the way. Like me, she didn’t need her hand held but wanted help navigating the necessary, bountiful, and varied resources available to writers. Writing courses, writing communities, writing groups and partners, writing retreats, writing editors and coaches. The two of us alternatively nodding our heads concluding that writing and publishing a book demands devotion, commitment, passion, and purpose to see it through. And money. And time. And more money.

We chuckled as we homed in on the fact that the writing path asked us to adapt to unforeseen setbacks, learn to advocate for what we needed, integrate feedback, and spend more years writing than we could have anticipated. Writing my memoir took seven years of writing and crafting alongside grieving, parenting, and working full-time. And at least a year of editing and design to prepare it for print, along with jam-packed preparation to market it by discerning which suggestions to follow, getting a head shot, procuring blurbs, and trying to become technologically savvy enough to prepare to promote it on social media with flare. No wonder, I told Nancy, when I was finally ready to release my sacred work into the world, my soul laid bare, I asked myself, not for the first time, “Why am I doing this again?”

As Nancy told me she is about to market her third book, the answer to that question began to crystallize. I have developed close friendships with my writing partners whom I met eight years ago at a writing retreat. We have laughed, cried, and shared our stories of surviving trauma and heartache. I have had the privilege of getting to know a cohort of women publishing with my publisher. We have cheered on one another as each book has launched. Nancy, whom it feels like I’ve known for a lot longer than the hour we sat together, told me writing taught her to get to know herself more intimately. She writes to commune with nature and relate her observations about what getting deeply present reveals to her. Writing has taught me so much, taken me to the truth, and given me strength in my vulnerability in hopes that the tears in my words might help anyone hurting feel less alone.  

The question of “Why?” will vary for each of us who contemplate putting a book into the world. But for me, my son is my reason. May “Reaching for Beautiful” honor Christopher, capture the story of his life and help his spirit shine on. If you knew him when he was here, you get to remember his brightness. If you didn’t, I get to brag about it. Writing my memoir, even had I not decided to publish it, was healing for me and ultimately needed to be shared. It connected me to my child when I entered the darkness, enabled me to express and move through every messy iteration of my grief, reflect on my firstborn’s life and reconcile every decision I made as his mom so I could make meaning of my seismic loss and survive it. Despite not knowing what it would take to get here, my writing journey has offered so many unexpected gifts beyond the healing of connecting to myself and my son. For anyone embarking on this writing journey, may you walk the winding path alongside a community of fellow women travelers.   

Check out Sally McQuillen’s Reaching for Beautiful here:

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In this interview, Brendan discusses the words of wisdom that became his north star while writing his new biography, The Front Runner, his advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Brendan O’Meara
Literary agent: Susan Canavan of WLA Books
Book title: The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine
Publisher: Mariner Books
Release date: May 20, 2025
Genre/category: Biography
Previous titles: Six Weeks in Saratoga: How Three-Year-Old Filly Rachel Alexandra Beat the Boys and Became Horse of the Year
Elevator pitch: The Front Runner is a definitive reappraisal of the iconic distance runner, Steve Prefontaine, ahead of the 50^th anniversary of his passing, May 30, 2025. It’s a story that seeks to get to the man behind the myth, of the young man who still towers, all these years later, over American track and field.

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What prompted you to write this book?

There’s a long-ish answer and a short-ish answer, and out of pity for readers of this magazine and website, I’ll favor the latter.

I’m always looking five to 10 years ahead for major anniversaries. I happen to live in Eugene, Oregon—TrackTown USA—and knew the 50^th anniversary of Steve’s passing was approaching. Much to our surprise, there hadn’t been much written about him from a pure journalistic point of view in decades. So, as a subject, he was ripe for the picking.

I always knew him to be a fascinating figure; movie-star looks, brazen. I worked for a few years in specialty running retail and we’d often have Without Limits, one of the Prefontaine movies, going on the TV in the background on weekends. Around 2017, when statues were being torn down and interrogated, I thought there is no statue taller — figuratively speaking — in Oregon than Prefontaine, so I started saving string for what would ultimately be The Front Runner.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The seed of the idea came in 2017, but it didn’t take root until a chance phone call with my soon-to-be-agent-at-the-time Susan Canavan in March 2022. I had pitched her an as-of-yet unpublished baseball memoir, which she said was fine and all, but “you’re not famous, and memoirs are a tough sell. Are you working on anything, perhaps, more commercial?”

I filibustered, being caught flat-footed by the query, when I peeked over at my bookcase and say Tom Jordan’s slim biography simply titled Pre. I told Susan I had been saving string on a Prefontaine project thinking ahead three years to the 50^th anniversary of his death. She cut me off and said, “I can sell that on proposal.”

The proposal process took about a year to get it right, and then, once the book sold, I had 14 months to report, research, and write a serviceable draft to my kind and brilliant and patient editor.

The arc of the book changed significantly. If I’m being honest, once the book sold, I didn’t look at my book proposal at all. That said, it was always going to be a straight, unauthorized, journalistic biography from the beginning to the end of his short life. And through hundreds of interviews and thousands of articles, I sought to humanize him in a way that got beyond the mythology and grounded him in his humanity. My north star was a quote from Jonathan Eig, this in reference to his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography on the Rev. Dr. Martin Lurther King, Jr., “We’d turned him into a monument and a national holiday and lost sight of his humanity. So, I really wanted to write a more intimate book.”

Taped that below my monitor!

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Oh, yes! For one, I thought I’d get my second book advance payment when I met my deadline on April 15, 2024. But turns out, you only get that second payment once it passes the legal review, which didn’t happen until January 2025.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

When you write a rough draft of 160,000 words and you need to get it down to 105,000, you quickly need to ask of your reporting and research what work those anecdotes and scenes are doing for you, for the story you’re hoping to tell.

Also, even in biography, the author can have a point of view; not explicitly first-person, but, as my editor told me several times, “You have your thumb on the scale. Nobody has done as much research on this guy as you, so you can assert; you are the driver of the car pointing out things to the passengers saying, ‘This is important and this is why.’”

I often outsourced much of the commentary to quotes early on, mainly because so many of these great people in this story were so quoteable. But you soon realize you need to put much of it in your own words, paraphrasing and be a more confident narrator.

And this isn’t so much as a surprise, exactly, but even when you’re operating in nonfiction, where the backdrop and the facts need to be verifiable, there is an element of world-building, something we typically associate with fantasy and other fictions. But these real people operated under a certain set of circumstances, and those circumstances acted upon them. That’s an exciting element of biography that I don’t think gets spoken about enough.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

Steve Prefontaine was ahead of his time in so many regards, and his story is one of inspiration, yes, but also one of exploitation that we’ve only recently seen athletes claim the power they deserve. This was a novel, even revolutionary, concept—certainly in track and field circles—in the early 1970s.

Steve packed a lot into his 24 years, and maybe we can all heed his most famous quote that, “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” That maybe we’ll spend less time on the trivial and push the boundaries of what we once thought impossible, that there is no shame in failure, and that there is, in fact, a higher standard than victory.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

In a day and age where we’re so hyper-connected and it’s all too easy to feel crummy about our lives/careers when we look online and see such perfect avatars of literary merit and success, my go-to advice is: Run your own race. No two careers are alike, especially now. Comparison breeds resentment and jealousy, and it’s a fuel that doesn’t burn clean.

You never know what privilege certain people benefit from. They might tout that it was all a matter of hard work but fail to acknowledge they have no student load debt, or don’t have to worry about being the breadwinner and health insurance provider of the family; this list can get awful long. (I’m very transparent about the privilege I benefit from, but I won’t weigh that down here.)

I speak from experience of comparing my rotten career path to what seemed like the rocket ship of everybody else’s. It bred a ton of bitterness that cost me a lot of time and energy better put into getting better at the work. Out of that crucible came “The Creative Nonfiction Podcast,” the show I started in 2013, which, a decade later, gave me a fairly attractive platform on which to land a Big Five publishing deal for The Front Runner (and hopefully more books). None of my heroes have my weird, wobbly path, nor should anyone behind me follow mine.

But if we lean into irrefutable, timeless skills of the craft, we can ride the currents of technology and publishing trends and find the path that works best for each of us on a time scale that might not be celebrated on the covers of magazines, or touted in those dreadful 30-under-30 lists. If you’re a late bloomer, embrace it. I’m a late bloomer, too.

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(4 Tips for Good Adventure Writing.)

I put the vignettes away and started learning how to write in the more familiar, and what I thought would be more publishable, form of a novel. I published a collection of essays strung together as a memoir, and then a book of chick lit. All the while, I had the feeling that I was wedged into a too-tight pair of jeans. I thought, “This is how writing is, the lack of oxygen comes with the job.” I didn’t realize the lack of oxygen was from the stress of trying to make myself into something I wasn’t. I love novels, oh how I love them. But I was made to write vignettes.

It’s one thing to wear an alright outfit into public. The jeans look fine, the whole thing is passable. But when you find something that is an extension of yourself—the dress or shirt that screams YOU—other people are the ones who can’t catch their breath. In the very best way, one might go low on oxygen, of course.

Neither of the books I wrote while wearing too-tight denim did well enough to make the industry look twice. What I learned from those years and the mild heartbreak: If you’re going to fail it feels a lot worse to do it while you’re wearing your own clothes. (Pretty Woman viewers, please cheer!)

And so I returned to vignettes. Are they a hard sell? Yes. But in case no one has said this to you yet—if you aren’t a well-established author, or a celebrity with a well-established platform, everything is going to be a hard sell. In the hopes you might skip some of the discomfort of years toiling on stories that aren’t your story, here is the question that helped me through my mid-career writing crisis: Do you want to sell books or do you want to write books?

Fast forward 10 years. Imagine yourself never getting an agent. Never selling a book. Or imagine your self-published book languishing online. Do you still like writing? Do you wake up in the middle of the night with a desire to spend the next day only with your computer? If that’s the case, you probably want to write.

Now imagine yourself selling many, many books in a genre you hate. Do you feel like a sell out or do you feel like the luckiest duck ever? If you feel a quack-quack coming on, selling is probably higher on your radar. (And there is no shame in the game, this is about honing in on your goal.)

If you care more about selling books—then take the advice of my writing teacher. Find the type of novel that you think will be hot in a year, and write until you hit those blessed last two words ‘The End.’ (Which actually means, the beginning of editing, then getting an agent, then finding a publisher, but those are pep talks to be had in other articles.)

Click to continue.

If you’re in the game because there’s a story in you that you are going to need to uncover over the process of years, or decades, in a form that maybe isn’t even evident to you yet, welcome to the world of elastic waistbands. We aren’t the most popular crew. We don’t get the most likes. Influencers don’t know our names. But when we do write something that takes someone’s breath away—oh, the feeling of the universe aligning is thorough and complete.

The funny turn in my story is that a book of my vignettes is now getting published in May. Let me be clear that I do not tell you this because I think there’s a formula there such as, “Pursue what you love and publication will come.” This industry is too hard, cold, and cutting for that. But what I’ve described above is a different kind of formula: “Pursue what you love, sit in the comfort of knowing you’re telling your story, and what others think eventually stops mattering.”

Someone asked me not long ago if I wish I’d never taken that teacher’s advice and put vignettes away in the first place. My first answer was, “Of course.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I couldn’t actually say that. I am grateful for the oxygenless years, the books that weren’t bestsellers, the hard-won years of returning to the desk every day. How can we know what fits until we know what doesn’t? Is the goal to be published or to be real, dimensional people?

Check out Anna Mitchael’s They Will Tell You the World Is Yours here:

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(Using Magic as Metaphor in Fantasy Novels.)

When we started opening the crates holding the old props and equipment, I flashed back on being backstage—walking through its fluid darkness, the humming crowds through the curtain, and my mother in black sequins smelling of hair spray and fresh lipstick. Then we rolled out the big gold top hat; I had jumped out of it in the opening number. It was a large stylish prop of ribbed wire and shiny gold plaster. And there she was—my stage-struck 14-year-old self in her first high heels jumping out of that hat to a round of applause. I viscerally felt her excitement and dewy optimism. Everywhere she looked was the promise of magic.  

A magic I had not found in my adult life. I didn’t like my job or where I lived, and my romantic relationships always fizzled out. I felt a little lost and sad, and yet I’d had this incredible adventure in the big magic show. To see and touch again all the old props—the musty foulards, foam birds, wire lady, battered wardrobe trunks—reminded me I had once experienced something grand. I wanted to understand that and write about it. I didn’t know why exactly. I just hoped it would lift me out of my malaise.

There is something intrinsically entrancing about a magic show and it doesn’t matter what side of the curtain one is on. A woman rises off the ground in inky blue light. All the backstage maneuvering to make this happen cannot diminish the feeling we are being lured into another way of seeing. Even backstage, amid all the secret compartments and angled mirrors, I believed something extraordinary could happen at any moment, and it wasn’t just my youthful exuberance.

We innately want to be released from a narrow, predictable world. As I began writing the book, I started to see what I had found, lost, and wanted to find again.

In writing The Magician’s Daughter – A Memoir, I had to embody the young girl I once was. I began reading my journals from the road. I had filled two 200-page notebooks with my musings, and apparently, I believed my father’s show was going to make me a famous magician’s assistant. But before the magic show, I’d had another dream. Stashed in my kid’s bedroom closet, were still my old music albums. They were reminders of my biggest dream of all—I wanted to be a famous rock-n-roll star. When the fancy illusion show came along, I traded my dream for my father’s dream even though all I had to do on stage was dress up, hand him props, and jump out of boxes. That’s when I realized this memoir would be about my journey back to myself within the light and motion of a magic show. 

A magic show with plenty of mishaps and disappointments. 

My father’s one cherished dream inspired this tour. He wanted to be a Las Vegas headliner and hoped that tour would be a springboard to a casino booking. Before I was born, he had manned his own traveling illusion show, and now he wanted to revive it in a big way.

Click to continue.

In The Magician’s Daughter – A Memoir I share his excitement for a steady venue in neon-lit Las Vegas, and also his discouragement as difficulties mount on the road. Each time I’m so disillusioned. I assume my father will pack-up the show and sweep us all back home, yet each time he keeps on. As I wrote, I recalled his determination and great belief in himself, people, and life. It’s what sent him on that quest for glory in the first place. What a great example he was to me. At least when I was a kid.

My adult relationship with my father was strained. I had discounted all his best, most inspiring qualities and even the magic show had become tainted. That was one reason why I was in such a mess. I was determined to—do it on my own. Each time I sat in front of the computer screen, I had to be honest. I’d been handed magic on stage and off. It was time to journey back to myself again, and love and appreciate my father and his magic show once more.

I worked on the book for many years unable to complete it. Finally, I admitted I didn’t want my father to read it because I had revealed many of his tricks and illusions. Some of the illusions were so intertwined with the plot, I had no choice. Other times it was purely poetic ornamentation. I also revealed tricks to give my readers a true backstage view into the artificial innards of a magic show. But the main reason was this—in order for my young self to find real magic on the road, I had to first know what isn’t magic. And there is nothing very magical about a magician’s secrets—a clip on a boater hat, sliding doors, black thread, eyelids on a floating ball, an extra card in an inside pocket. So uninteresting and hush hush.

When I joined the magic show, I understood nothing about its inner workings. What better way to bring the reader into the story. I discover the secrets, wonders, curiosities of the magic show as the reader does. We both watch my father for the first time load his pockets behind his wardrobe trunk. We both see that little claw on his thumb—a  thumb-tip with a razor blade duct-taped to the top. And we wonder, what act does he use that in? 

I had told my father I was writing a book and offered no other details. Each time I thought of publication, I wondered: How would I break the news I had exposed his floating piano? And everything else? He was guarded and cautious regarding his illusion show. Secrets are the beating animal heart of every magic show. No way I’d get by unscathed.

Throughout all this, author and poet Mark Doty was on my mind. His memoir Firebird cost him his relationship with his father which he wrote about in the essay “Return to Sender.” This line always stayed with me: “I have told the truth, which may indeed set you free, but not without the price of betrayal.” Betrayal, as strong as the word is, feels right in this situation. I wasn’t a stranger but a daughter whom he had trusted as an assistant. 

I shared the dilemma with a few writers. Some sympathized, others were dismissive, and one writer was angry. “Are you kidding me? You’re going to let him stop you. You have a right to tell your story.” 

What I’ve learned is that only I know what to do. It’s a personal decision without a right or wrong. Despite the issues between my father and I, there was love. He’d been generous to me in many ways, and in exchange, knowing my memoir would upset and embarrass him, I decided, at the age of 40, not to publish it till he was dead. This wasn’t exactly going to be soon. At the time, he was a happy and active senior citizen galivanting around Las Vegas and Hollywood performing and attending professional magic functions with my mother. I waited 13 years. He died in 2015. And the memoir is publishing this year. 

I cannot explain how the magic show changed me, without explaining how writing this book changed me. I went back to the beginning and saved myself. Magic. If I really look, it’s everywhere.

Check out Katy Grabel’s The Magician’s Daughter here:

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