F166.
The Stages of Writing & Publishing Memoir
Friday, February 9, 2024
12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
There is no correct or unique way to write or publish memoirs as fragments of our lives. The memoirists in this panel will discuss their diverse processes in the publishing industry. From cooking-themed to realistic-paintings and borderlands memoirs—this group of writers brings a collage of stages of writing by discussing how one can start crafting a memoir or a nonfiction piece. How to know when it should be fiction or CNF? Why are our stories relevant? And how can they be published?
Participants
Ofelia Montelongo is a bilingual writer from Mexico. Her work has been published in several literary magazines. She teaches at the University of Maryland. In 2021, she was named one of the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellows. ofeliamontelongo.com
Annabelle Tometich spent eighteen years as a journalist, food writer, and restaurant critic in south Florida. Her debut memoir, The Mango Tree, is forthcoming from Little, Brown. She wrote restaurant reviews under a Frenchman’s pen name for fifteen years before revealing herself as a Filipina woman in 2021.
Hyeseung Song is the author of the forthcoming memoir Docile, from Simon & Schuster. She is a first-generation Korean-American writer and painter based in New York City.
Margaret Juhae Lee is an Oakland-based writer and a former editor at The Nation magazine. Her book, Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History (Melville House), chronicles her search for information about her grandfather who was a student revolutionary in colonial Korea and will be published in March 2024.
Sarah Chaves is a Portuguese American writer, editor, and educator based in Boston, Massachusetts. She has received fellowships from PEN America, Bread Loaf, Fulbright, Disquiet, and more. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Teen Vogue, among others.
