Why Am I (still, again) Writing About Postpartum Depression? Because 21 Years Later, It Lingers

Twenty-one years ago at this time, my first child was 10 months old, and I remember thinking, it's got to end soon…but it didn't: "It" being postpartum depression. 

I've written before about how PPD disrupted my early mothering, but today I have an essay at Brain, Child which addresses an aspect of PPD I've become significantly more interested in as my two sons have grown—the effects of PPD on a mother as time passes.

For me, and I suspect for many others, PPD didn't just disappear and leave no scars behind. 

Here's an excerpt:

"Because here’s the truth about what comes after severe PPD goes away: the deepest, darkest clouds may wash away in a few months, or a year, or in my case, about 22 months. Your therapist may wean you off the anti-depressants which saved your sanity (and probably your marriage). You may have more good mornings, and eventually only the kind of mornings when you wake up and you are no longer already crying. You may not any longer be overcome, hourly, with feelings of guilt, shame, hopelessness, and fear. All this may happen, and you may begin to enjoy your child (or children), sink into your role as their mother, relish your little family—but. That will never feel like your right or your natural state, and you may, at any given stressful mothering moment, think you certainly are going to drift away, back down that hole. The truth about having survived severe PPD is that it is incipient. It lingers. There is a legacy. Its shadow, the fact of its presence in your history, never goes away.

And you are a different person for it. You are a different mother."

To read the full essay, please hop over to the Brain, Child blog. 

If you're a frequent visitor here, you know that I don't do much advocacy in the pieces I publish, but this one is important -- to me and maybe to a lot of other women. I believe it will resonate for many mothers who don’t feel comfortable talking about PPD's after-effects. I'd love to start a conversation about that, and I hope you'll pass the essay link along to anyone you know who may be affected by PPD. Wouldn't it be great if it also sparked some discussion among those who study maternal mental health?

As always, thanks for your support. 

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons - miyukiutada

Author Interview with Lisa Lenzo on her short story collection, Strange Love

A couple of years ago, I was fortunate to occasionally edit essays and short stories for Brain, Child magazine—a most enjoyable freelance editing gig. That's how I met Lisa Lenzo, whose short story collection, Strange Love (Wayne State University Press) was published in 2014. I so enjoyed working with her on "Aliens," a story that first appeared in Brain, Child, that I knew I'd want to follow-up one day with an author interview. When I read the book, I was captivated not only by Lisa's prose, storycraft, and characters, but by the setting along Lake Michigan, and the role the lake and weather plays in her book. 

Strange Love is a current finalist for Foreward Review's IndieFab Book of the Year, and was also chosen as a Michigan Notable Book for 2015. Bonnie Jo Campbell, in her endorsement on the back cover writes, "These stories will surprise you with their intensity and intimacy, and Lenzo's language will mesmerize you." 

Lisa L. was kind enough to answer my nosy questions.   

Please welcome Lisa Lenzo

Q. The stories move in a chronological way, with the same central characters – Annie and her daughter Marly – over 10-plus years, but also leave out chunks of time. Did you write them in that order? Did you write additional stories to make the collection fuller? Were there other Annie/Marley stories that you left out?

LL. I wrote the first story, “Still Life,” many years ago—it was finished in time to include in my first book, Within the Lighted City, but it wasn’t a good fit for that collection. I didn’t write my next relationship story until a decade later, when, after coming home from another date with an odd and interesting yet frustrating man, I thought: This is ridiculous! This is hilarious! I need to write this down. And I proceeded to write down scene after scene from that relationship, which I then transformed into a story. At some point I had three long stories about my relationships with various men, and I realized I could write several more and have a collection.

I ended up with five or six long stories, which I showed to my writing group. They really liked Marly, Annie’s daughter, who appeared in many of her mother’s stories, and they wanted to see more of her. They also thought the stories about the mom’s boyfriends should be cut way back. So I cut the five stories I had about Annie by about half and wrote four Marly stories, which I then interspersed between the Annie stories. That makes it sound easier than it was.

The most difficult thing was to write each story so that it stood alone, yet didn’t repeat what was included in the earlier stories. For instance, when I mentioned Marly’s flame-red hair or her abusive boyfriend in one story, I couldn’t mention them again in a subsequent story as if introducing them for the first time.

Q. I understand you tried to make the collection into a novel but it didn't feel right. Can you talk about that attempt, the process of understanding whether you are writing a novel or a collection, and what drove your final decision?

LL. I knew I was writing a collection early on, and by the time I was done, that it was a novel-in-stories. But my agent said that the term “novel-in-stories” was not being used anymore, that the term in favor was “linked collection,” and collections “don’t sell.” It was my agent’s idea to turn it into a novel so that she could sell it—she thought I would be able to transform it into a novel, because it was almost one already. 

So I tried to do what she asked by filling in the chronological gaps and also filling out Annie’s and Marly’s lives, so that the focus wasn’t so much on boys and men. But I ended up with my string of neat, self-contained stories—each its own little cabin--looking as if I’d tacked them together with scrap lumber. And I found the overall story was stronger when there were time gaps and the focus was mainly on men. Of course you can’t help but get some sense of the rest of Annie’s and Marly’s lives, too, especially the mother-daughter relationship, which is the strongest and maybe the most interesting relationship in the book. Ironically, I think Strange Love as it is could have “passed” for a novel—readers and reviewers keep telling me it reads like one.

Q. Lake Michigan (often ice covered) is central in the stories, and you've said that as a Michigan native the lake is in your "bones". Do you think of the lake as a character in the book?

LL. I grew up in Detroit, which is also in my bones, but when I first came to live on the lake at the age of 18, I fell under its spell, and it has held me ever since. “Character” seems too small a thing to describe The Lake, which, from the vantage point of anyone on the beach, looks as big and wide as an ocean. It’s actually an inland sea, and for Annie, it’s as large as God—or actually, maybe larger, since she’s not sure God exists. And the Lake is Godlike—vast, mysterious, powerful, both soothing and harsh. It’s larger than life, larger than any character I can conceive of, whether man, woman, or child. It is an overreaching and underlying presence in Annie’s life and mine.

Q. Annie and Marly are variously in relationships with men and always with each other; so there's some romantic love, and some is familial--representative of the pursuit of love itself, which often does feel strange or work out strangely. I wonder what you had in mind by the title?

LL. Yes, it’s the pursuit of love that feels strange and works out strangely. And all love is somewhat strange, when you consider it closely enough--both weird and wondrous. At the same time, I think most people will agree that Annie and Marly’s men, with maybe one exception, are odd or strange or eccentric to varying degrees, and that Annie and Marly are somewhat unusual, too. As Marly says at one point, “You’re not exactly casebook normal, Mom, and I’m on medication.”

Q. We first came into contact when I was a freelance editor for Brain, Child, working with you on minor revisions for the story, "Aliens," in which a teenage Marly tries to distance herself from her mother. I was so happy to see Annie and Marly again in the pages of your book, as if they were old friends. I wonder, is that a small glimpse of what it's like for a fiction writer when you go back and revive characters?

LL. I tend to come back to the same characters, based on my family and myself. Then I need a break from them, so I write something totally different. Then I come back to my family again and, yes, it is nice to be in familiar territory, where I know the people so well that the main challenge is not in creating characters but in conveying them to the reader as richly as I can.

Q. Some writers find it easier to write about a geographic place when they are away from it, while others like to be in the environment they are writing about. Where do you fit in? Do you write best about Michigan and the lake region while there? Did you get away at any time while writing, and did that help or hinder your ability to conjure the place on the page?

LL. I think I work better when I’m in the place I’m writing about. Then,for instance, if I want to describe the ice on the lake, I can just walk down to the lake in winter and check it out. I’ve recently finished Taking the Blue Star, a novel set in and around Saugatuck, Michigan, and after one of the earlier drafts was done, I had a friend drive me to all the places where the characters traveled, at the same time of year (November) that the novel takes place, so I could look around me as my friend drove and flesh out the details related to setting.

Looking out at the fields of corn, still standing but dead, the stalks pale and dry, I thought ghost corn, unsure of whether I’d made up that phrase or heard it somewhere, and I gave that thought and phrase to one of my characters. One of the scenes happens at a nearby monastery, and another at the local gun and pizza shop, places I don’t normally frequent, and I wandered through both several times, getting a feel for them and seeing what was on display and for sale, casing both joints for whatever details I needed to use for my novel.

Q. Your introduction mentions you couldn't have completed the collection "without my writing pals". Can you talk about your writing community? Is it a matter of getting actual feedback on drafts? Or is it (instead or also) more about support and encouragement, having someone around who knows what an editorial rejection feels like?

LL. I rely on both things—feedback is essential and emotional support is, too—but since I am dedicated to writing and am not going to be deterred by rejection, it’s the feedback that I need the most. I sometimes worry that I’m missing out on greater connection to writers and writing communities, because unlike most writers, I have a nonacademic job, and I work too late in the evenings to attend most readings. I’m looking for an agent to sell my finished novel, and I wonder if it would be easier if I were in an academic setting and had access to more writers. But I’m grateful for all the writers I do know. And I truly rely on my closest writing friends to help me make my rough manuscripts into finished ones.

Q. In the online MFA program I teach in, we talk about designing a writing life, given that most students will always have a full- or part-time "day job" that isn't writing (and not every writer will want to teach). I believe that, like your character Annie, you work for a bus company. Can you describe how you organize time around your job, and how you sustain a writing life? In terms of productivity and craft, what does a writer, in it for the long haul, need to do to continue to write and not be frustrated by lack of time?

LL. I’m lucky in that, rather than working 9 to 5, I work in the afternoons, so I have the whole morning to write—more time than a lot of my teacher friends who are writers. The drawback is I usually work at my job six days a week and also into the evening, I don’t have summers off, and I’ve never had a sabbatical. Like any serious writer, I still have to draw lines around my writing time and create a balance between time for writing, family, friends, errands, etc. I worry that sometimes my friends and family are disappointed in some of my choices. But they mainly understand, I think, and it helps tremendously that I have a super supportive husband.

Q. What are you working on now? In addition to fiction, do you write in any other genre or form?

LL. Right now I’m doing research and taking notes for a book whose working title is None of Us Are Free. It’s an autobiographical and historical novel that takes place in Detroit, focusing on 1972 and 1973, when I was 15 and active in a city-wide radical movement whose main concerns were the criminal (in)justice system, the heroin epidemic, and a lethal and racist police unit known as STRESS. In addition to fiction, I also write creative nonfiction. My work often falls between the two, and I’m constantly struggling with trying to decide and define which of the two I’m creating. Some pieces are definitely one or the other, but many occupy a middle ground.

Note from Lisa Romeo: You might enjoy this Michigan Radio interview with Lisa Lenzo. And be sure to visit her website.

Swag ! Lisa Lenzo would like to send one blog reader a complimentary signed copy of her book. Just leave a comment here by Sunday, April 5. (Must have a U.S. postal address.)

Images of Lake Michigan ice, courtesy of Charlie Schreiner; others courtesy Lisa Lenzo

Guest Blogger Judy Labensohn on Why She's Writing a Hybrid Memoir

One of my occasional freelance assignments is with Brain, Child magazine, editing personal essays and short stories. That's how my path first crossed with Judy Labensohn, who wrote a moving and clear-eyed essay about spending time in her daughter's shoes before sending her off to military service. 

Judy is founder of The Writing Gym and The Writing Pad in Israel, venues for local residents, tourists, and visiting writers who write in English. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Kenyon Review, Kenyon Review Online, Southwest Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Creative Nonfiction, among others. She is a 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee. Judy is now at work on the final stages of The Mourning After: A Hybrid Memoir. 

Please welcome Judy Labensohn.

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because the continent of the inner life is a multifarious entity and demands multifarious means of expression. My memoir is a soul quest.

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because a fragmented self seeking salvation needs a fragmented genre.

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because the narrative "voice of experience," understanding, and maturity--while important, and one I use--bores me for the full length of a book. Like all people, I house a cacophony of voices. Why limit the memoir to one?

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because The Narrative I, like the real, physical I, demands many genres and types of texts and written documents to express the complexity, richness, and variability of the human condition.

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because I am a hybrid: part American, part Israeli, part Jewish, part nonbeliever, happy/ sad, serious/ funny, strong/weak--and I have come to learn that dualism confines.

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because between the front cover and the back cover a memoir can do anything. It can contain legal documents, fictional speculations, letters sent to real people, unsent letters to imaginary people, letters from real people, newspaper articles, short fiction, newspaper columns, revised versions of remembered scenes, revisions of revised versions of remembered scenes, a mother's letter, Biblical quotes, etc. etc. etc. 

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because finding the appropriate structure in which to fit all the pieces is a challenge, and fun.

The hybrid memoir is like a soup into which all the genres and categories of texts are thrown. The pieces blend together to communicate what it's like to lose a baby brother in Cleveland, Ohio, 1951 during National Brotherhood Week in a family where nobody is licensed to speak of death, so a certified rabbi comes to the house and says, Your brother died. Now repeat after me. The Lord is my shepherd.

The hybrid memoir is like a cholent—a big pot into which you throw the family secrets surrounding this death. The pot simmers not for a day, like a real cholent, but for years. After twenty, forty, sixty years you're still eating this burnt stew, hoping soon you will reach the bottom, sensing there is no bottom.

The fragmented memoir may mirror our fragmented lives in the 21st century, as David Shields suggests in Reality Hunger: A Manifesto or it may be a cop-out for writers who have shpilkes and cannot sit still for eight hours a day in order to write one long narrative with a mature understanding voice.

The hybrid memoir may be the literary equivalent of a collage writ large and I like collages. 

For sure the hybrid memoir is an oxymoron because, as Patricia Hampl, Michael Steinberg and many others agree, memoir itself is a mongrel, hybrid form.

The only person for whom the designation is critical is the worker at Barnes and Noble who asks her boss: Where should I shelve this book? Biography? Nonfiction? Fiction? Essays?  

Besides writing tips, Judy serves up fresh
figs and other fruit at
The Writing Pad.

To quote Ben Marcus: "Once upon a time there will be readers who won't care what imaginative writing is called and will read it for its passion, its force of intellect and for its formal originality." ("The Genre Artist," Believer Magazine, July, 2003)

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because it feels like the most honest, truthful and accurate way to deal with unresolved childhood grief and to share this process with the reader, whose soul is, no doubt, also confused, as described in  W.S. Merwin's "To the Soul":

Is anyone there
if so
are you real
either way are you
one or several
if the latter
are you all at once
or do you
take turns not answering...(see the full poem here)

Note from Lisa:  Judy will be stopping by here over the next week, to answer any questions left in the comments section - so ask!

Visit Judy at Write in Israel.

Editor Interview with Marcelle Soviero, Editor and Publisher of Brain,Child Magazine

In Summer of 2012, many readers (and a huge swath of writers who value paying markets!) were upset to learn that Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers, was closing after 13 years publishing intelligent essays and fiction about modern parenting. (The ad-free magazine was often called "The New Yorker for mothers.") Its two founding publishers/editors were moving on to new stages of life and work (Jennifer Niesslein now edits an essay site, Full Grown People, and Stephanie Wilkinson established a farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, VA.).

Just when most were resigned that yet one more print magazine was gone forever, Connecticut resident Marcelle Soviero, owner of Erielle Media LLC, purchased and revived the magazine, which is now published quarterly, plus one special teen issue per year. Soviero, a memoir author, essayist, former executive at several tech start-ups, and writing teacher, has also redesigned the magazine, expanded BC's online presence, added a Brain, Mother blog, and just recently published  a book of essays written by many of Brain, Child ‘s bloggers. Last week, I asked Marcelle a few nosy questions. (Disclosure: I am an occasional freelance editor for the magazine, helping writers to revise essays and short stories.)

Lisa Romeo:  Many people (myself included) were thrilled when you re-launched Brain, Child magazine. I believe many longtime subscribers stuck with it. Were you worried about the first issue you published being accepted?

Marcelle Soviero: Our subscriber base has grown significantly in the last two years, so that is a good thing. I worried about the first issue, but I worry about every issue – that it is the best it can be and stands up to our mission of publishing the highest quality literary magazine available.  

LR: Had you always wanted to run a magazine, or was buying Brain, Child more a matter of, "Someone ought to keep that magazine going," and then taking the plunge?

MS: I always wanted to run (or be an editor-in-chief) of a magazine since my first stint as an editor of Popular Science.

LR: In the early stages, what did you decide to keep the same, and what did you decide to change?

MS: My big push was to update the design of the magazine, to add poetry, to produce an expanded digital version, and to grow our online and social media presence. We kept the Brain, Child departments the same but created icons for each department in the print issue. And we’ve commissioned many new artists. My goal was to capture the feeling of the essay with the art as well as the words. In our digital issues we offer bonus content not available in the print edition, and we plan more and more of that in the future.  

LR: I'm thinking there has likely been some inevitable backlash to some of that evolution?

MS: We received the 2014 award for best overall design of a literary magazine from Boston Bookbuilders, which was a nice validation of our effort and the efforts of our amazing Art Directors Mike Lombardo and Nancy Anderson. We’ve received so many letters from readers saying how much they love the updated, redesigned magazine and our website and social media readership has grown exponentially and our digital products are selling really well. I can’t complain.

LR: You have been working hard to develop the BC web presence and spread the BC "brand" across social media platforms. Can you talk about some of these ventures, and why and how that's helping to support a subscriber- and newsstand-supported print magazine in 2014?

MS: We’ve decided for the most part not to include ads in the magazine for now to preserve the editorial quality and look of the magazine. We do however save space each issue for a pro bono ad for a nonprofit cause we care about. We are really fortunate in that our subscriptions support the magazine.

LR: One interesting partnership is the cross-posting of some BC content on the Huffington Post. Obviously, this brings BC to the attention of thousands, perhaps millions of readers who might otherwise not know of it. What are the residual effects of that, and is it something that your writers have embraced?

MS: We work with Huffington Post, Mothering.com, and other select content partners to expand our reach and showcase our writers. We’ve helped our writers republish their work as well, in places like The Washington Post, UTNE, and Babble. Writer Rebecca Lanning showcased her Brain, Child piece "The Nap Year" in The Washington Post; Catherine Buni just republished an abridged version of her Brain, Child feature story “Conversation Starters” in The Atlantic. And I was fortunate enough to see Claire DeBerg perform a shorter version of her Brain, Child essay “Finding Gloria” as part of Listen to Your Mother 2014 in Minneapolis.

LR: Many writers covet a byline in BC (because of its reputation and cache, and also because it's a paying market!). Can you give a peek inside the editorial process?

MS: We have an editorial team who read every submission. We receive several hundred submissions a month. We publish 20 short pieces on the blog, 8 - 10 pieces on the website monthly, and 6 - 9 pieces in the print magazine quarterly. In addition we have special issues that offer additional paid opportunities for writers. We receive submissions on an ongoing basis. Our submission guidelines can be found here. I like essays that tell a unique story or take a new angle on a common topic. I personally look for strong dialogue that moves the story along while characterizing the speaker.  And I am in love with metaphor.

LR: Can you tell me more about the Brain, Mother blog, another paying market for writers?

MS: Brain, Mother has given us the opportunity to publish more great work by incredible writers. Senior editor Randi Olin, who joined me two weeks after I bought the magazine, manages the blog and makes sure the posts are thoughtful and tackle topics mothers care about. We look for a wide range of voices and edit every piece.  One of our contributing bloggers, Lauren Apfel, just won a BlogHer award for her outstanding op-ed pieces.  We pay our contributing bloggers, those who post for us regularly. (Blog guidelines are here. - LR).

LR: Though the tagline for BC, has always been "The magazine for thinking mothers," do you run pieces by fathers and others in parenting roles?

MS: Yes. We’ve had plenty of essays by fathers – the amazing Jon Sponaas is a contributing blogger. Jack Cheng, Joe Freitas, and a dozen others have written for us. We welcome male voices, and we are not shy about showcasing voices from all types of families all over the globe. 

LR: What's in the future for BC? 

MS:  We have more books and special issues underway (we just published our first book -- This is Childhood: Book & Journal), audio and video programming are in the works, and some terrific partnerships.

LR: Has publishing the magazine turned out to be what you expected?

MS: It has been better than I ever expected. Outside of marrying my husband and raising my five children, buying Brain, Child is the best thing I ever did. I couldn’t be happier.

LR: You've published one memoir yourself, An Iridescent Life. Are you working on another book length project, or has the business of running the magazine left little time for your own writing?

MS: My writing centers me; I am always at work on new projects. I write every morning from 4:00 – 6:00 am, it’s who I am.

LR: I think contributors like to hear that you are also "in the trenches," so to speak, trying to find time in your busy day to work on your personal writing project(s). Any advice in that area?

MS: For me it was important years ago to cut out TV time and also wake up really early. I enter writing times into my calendar, and I never miss an appointment with myself. Last, if I have an engagement (lunch with a friend for example) and it gets cancelled, I steal away and write for that time instead. And I always have my notebook. I’ve written many an essay while in waiting rooms, or at sports practices!

Note from Lisa: One blog reader will win a free one-year subscription to Brain, Child magazine, as well as a full set of 2013 issues. To be eligible for the random drawing, just leave a comment here on the blog by midnight, Tuesday, June 3. (Must have a U.S. postal address.) 

You can find Brain,Child on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Guest Blogger Patricia Berry on Finding the Essay at AWP

Patricia Berry, like dozens of literary folk, lives in nearby Montclair, New Jersey. Pat and I were once members of a small writing group for a while, nudging each other on, hatching plans, and laughing around one another's dining room tables. She is an essayist whose work has appeared in several anthologies, including Unbuttoned (Harvard Common Press) and Over the Hill and Between the Sheets (Springboard). Pat is also a creative writing coach who teaches in the Columbia University Summer High School Program; blogs occasionally about books, films and the writing life; and contributes to The Days of Yore, a blog featuring interviews with writers and other artists. She has an MFA in creative writing (nonfiction) from Columbia’s School of the Arts.  

  

Please welcome Patricia Berry.

Like recent guest blogger Ryder Ziebarth, I attended my very first Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference earlier this month in Boston. And like Ryder, I discovered AWP is a heady event—and one designed for sprinters. Since I have not jogged in years, I narrowed my fact-and-inspiration finding to those writing questions that have been nagging me. I circled and starred my way through the program guide, identifying plenty of panels with potential for answers. In the end, only once did I need to dash along the spacious corridors of Hynes Convention Center in search of my next hit of literary intelligence.

Where my work is concerned, there are lately two issues. One is, How do I pitch the project I’ve been laboring over for going on three years? Is it an essay collection or a memoir? I know what I think it is and what I want it to be (essays), and I know what several agents have told me it must be (memoir). Until I’m somebody, the argument goes, that is, an author with so much name recognition that a publisher could actually sell an essay collection with my name on it, I’m stuck with the M word. Not that there’s anything wrong with publishing a memoir. I just don’t think that what I read on my pages adds up to one long and connected personal story. Or should. It turned out AWP had a panel of established writers with whom I could commiserate: The Godzilla of Nonfiction: Has Memoir Swallowed the Essay?

I’ve read Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum regularly since her first book, My Misspent Youth, a collection of individual essays on life as a young professional, was published in 2001. During the Godzilla panel, Daum implied that by publishing essays right out of the gate, she’d snuck in under the wire; the trend toward longer linear narratives had not quite taken hold. She wasn’t so lucky with her most recent book, LifeWould Be Perfect If I Lived in That House (2010). What she wrote as a collection of personal essays around her preoccupation with real estate became memoir when she was informed it would not sell otherwise. Daum applied what she calls “gratuitous connective tissue” to the pieces, ending the book and the property search, a little-too-tidily for her taste, with a wedding. The book, she told us, suffered as a result.

Panelist Emily Fox Gordon’s Book of Days: PersonalEssays (2010) is her fourth book, which I guess makes her somebody. Gordon paid her dues: under pressure from editors, she converted two earlier collections into memoirs. At AWP, Gordon gave a worth-the-price-of-admission tutorial that riffed on the essay as confidence, not confession. The writer should think of the reader not as a judge or authority figure but as a confidante, she said. There is no coercion in this reader-writer relationship. Trusting that the reader is a friend will help write the piece. Gordon spoke, too, of how the personal essay can and, to be more effective, probably should contain memoir-like narrative passages in addition to essayistic analyses of events.

It seems author David McGlynn was unconsciously trying to avoid such passages while writing essays about violence. He expressed ambivalence about having to convert a collection of these essays to memoir, but he admitted that the act of writing scenes and descriptions of long-ago events following the home invasion and murder of a high school classmate gave him a better understanding of himself. It also became the basis of his memoir A Door in the Ocean (2012). In McGlynn’s case, the pushback from his agent that he write a memoir ultimately made for a more meaningful take on a lifelong obsession.

So has memoir devoured the essay? It seemed as though the panel was saying, Yes, but; as though willing essayists in the audience to follow our hearts for as long as we can hold out. It’s a game plan I can live with. Before closing, moderator Debra Monroe offered a sort of end around, a way to avoid the memoir-or-essays tag altogether. Monroe described how author Jo Ann Beard managed this with her 1999 nonfiction work The Boys of My Youth, which bears only a title -- not followed by a colon or subtitle. On its release, reviewers identified Boys (which one Godzilla panelist described as a perfect book) as they saw it, some calling it memoir, others referring to it as a collection of personal stories.

“I am drawn to the shagginess of the essay,” Phillip Lopate writes in the introduction to his latest collection, Portrait Inside My Head (2013). I like this description and I like that he calls his latest assortment of essays a “hodgepodge,” a label I wish I could pull off with my own work. And how perfect that Lopate was in the audience that afternoon. One after the other, the writers at the table acknowledged the master.

The other issue I brought to AWP was teaching. Each year I am an instructor in Columbia’s summer program for high school students, Over three weeks I hope I help them develop their writing, working along a spectrum that begins with poetry and ends with long form nonfiction. As I passed hundreds of convention bookstalls, the challenge of keeping the teaching fresh for “my kids” was on my mind.

Am I the last to hear of Dave Eggers’ 826 National? The enterprising Mr. Eggers launched his writing and tutoring centers in 2002, and now there’s an 826 National book imprint. This YouTube video gives a little more background on one of its titles.

With all the publisher swag at AWP, one could fill a new tote (the editor of Brain, Child handed me a high-quality green and purple canvas number on the last day) without pulling out one’s wallet until lunch. And then I found myself flipping through 826 National’s Don’t Forget to Write, 50 creative writing lesson plans devised by some wonderful writers, including quirky Sarah Vowell (“The First Draft Is My Enemy: Revisions”) and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart contributor Kristen Schall (“How to Write a One-person Show About a Historical Figure”). When I happened on lesson plan # 32, I dug into my bag and plunked down $23. How could I not? That plan is written by Meghan Daum and titled simply “The Essay.”

Pat would be delighted if you followed her on Twitter @patricia_berry