T244.

The Blended Memoir: When Memoir Isn't Just Memoir

Virtual
Thursday, March 24, 2022
3:20 pm to 4:20 pm

 

Blended memoirs—or books or collections that incorporate other genres and forms into the personal narrative—are increasingly common in today's literary market. But how to strike the right balance between the personal and the critical, the reported, the illustrated, the researched? How to sell it? Our panel will explore the creative process and blunt publishing reality of this emergent form.



Outline & Supplemental Documents

Event Outline: The_Blended_Memoir__When_Memoir_Isnt_Just_Memoir_outline_(1).docx

Participants

Moderator:

Jeanna Kadlec is the author of the forthcoming memoir-in-essays This I Know: A Memoir of Heresy (Mariner Books, 2022). She is a former culture columnist at Longreads, and her work has appeared in ELLE, Glamour, Allure, NYLON, Lit Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, Autostraddle, and more.

Melissa Febos is the author of Whip Smart, Abandon Me, and Girlhood—a national bestseller. The inaugural winner of the Jeanne Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary, she is associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the nonfiction writing program.

Marcos Gonsalez is a queer Mexican Puerto Rican memoirist, essayist, and assistant professor. Gonsalez's debut blended memoir, Pedro's Theory, (2021) has been reviewed by the New York Times and Kirkus. Gonsalez's essays can be found at Lit Hub, New Inquiry, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.

Angela Chen is the author of Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR, Electric Literature, and Them. Her reporting and essays have also appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Paris Review, and more.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center