S231. This Is Not a Memoir: Thoughts on the Linked Essay Collection

Room 25, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Saturday, March 10, 2018
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm

 

What does it mean to publish—or read—a collection of linked essays? How is this nonfiction form different than a traditional essay collection or a memoir? And what characteristics, if any, does it share with a linked story collection? In this panel, writers and editors of linked essay collections will discuss the what and how of writing and publishing a linked essay collection, and why they didn’t just write a memoir.


Participants

Moderator:

Sarah Viren is the author of the forthcoming essay collection MINE, which won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. Her writing and translations have appeared in AGNI, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Guernica, Texas Monthly, and other literary magazines. She teaches at Arizona State University.

Angela Morales, a graduate of the University of Iowa's nonfiction writing program, is the author of The Girls in My Town, a collection of personal essays. Her book is the winner of the River Teeth Book Prize and the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Currently she teaches English at Glendale Community College.

Kristen Radtke is the author of the graphic memoir Imagine Wanting Only This. She is the managing editor of Sarabande Books and the film editor of TriQuarterly magazine. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Oxford American, Guernica, and many other places.

Ryan Van Meter's essay collection is If You Knew Then What I Know Now. His work has also appeared in journals and anthologies, including Best American Essays. A recent finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, he teaches at the University of San Francisco.

Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and the author of two books, My Body Is a Book of Rules and Starvation Mode. She is an assistant professor at the Ohio State University.

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