How Do You Write About Yourself and Others? with Sari Botton (From the Archive)

The Book I HAD to Write

In this episode, I talk with writer and editor Sari Botton. Back around 2010, Sari started an interview series at The Rumpus called “Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me.” At the time, as a writer of first-person nonfiction, she felt paralyzed by the fear of hurting those closest to her.

By definition, memoir and essays inevitably include stories about the people in our lives. But figuring out what the lines are – who we feel we can write about and how to do it – that takes time. And lots of real-world practice.

Over the past 12 yrs, Sari has grappled extensively with how to give herself permission to write about herself and others. As her new memoir-in-essays, And You May Find Yourself..., started coming together, she landed on a different way to understand this issue.

Writing about herself is really an act of defiance, she says. Women, and particularly women writing memoir, are often derided for first-person writing. Or, as she writes in the foreword to her new book: “I remembered that my voice matters. I’m using it now, to take up space, to say, ‘I was here.’”

In this interview, we also talk about Gen X identity, and about Sari’s newest project, Oldster magazine, a Substack newsletter aimed at exploring of how we live inside our aging bodies.

Sari Botton is also the editor of two anthologies, the award-winning GOODBYE TO ALL THAT: WRITERS ON LOVING & LEAVING NY, as well as the NYT bestselling followup NEVER SAY GOODBYE: WRITERS ON THEIR UNSHAKEABLE LOVE FOR NY. She teaches nonfiction at Catapult and in the MFA program at Bay Path University.

Discussed in this episode:

And You May Find Yourself... available from Bookshop | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

After Fifteen Years, I Stopped Panicking, Started Declawing, and Finally Published My Memoir, by Sari Botton (Catapult)

Conversations with Writers Braver than Me by Sari Botton (The Rumpus)

Oldster Magazine

Additional resources for writing about others:

A Big Shitty Party: Six Parables of Writing about Other People, by Melissa Febos

Other People’s Secrets: An Interview with Kerry Cohen by Paul Zakrzewski, (Brevity Magazine)

The Truth of Memoir: How to Write about Yourself and Others with Honesty, Emotion, and Integrity, by Kerry Cohen Bookshop | Amazon

“Other People’s Secrets” (essay) by Patricia Hampl, collected in I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory

Credits:

This episode was edited by Paul Zakrzewski and produced by Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions.

Get full access to The Book I Want to Write at bookiwanttowrite.substack.com/subscribe