The book tour kicks off 🪡
Reading at The Rally was the perfect first book event
Hi friends,
On Saturday, March 8, I’m teaching a class at Mud University, a series of pop-up workshops in Cambridge, New York. The class is called “Writing from Memory,” and here’s the description:
In this hands-on personal writing class, we will use a series of guided exercises to excavate and examine our most vivid memories. Together, we will read and discuss several short excerpts from both classic and contemporary literature where the writer begins with a memory and analyzes, questions, or even explodes it. Along the way, we will talk about techniques for handling the limits of memory when writing a personal essay or other piece of creative nonfiction. Participants will walk away with multiple "beginnings" and ideas for further development or revision.
Damn! I would take that class. (Now I just have to create it.)
This morning I pulled some favorites down from the favorites shelf. (Yes, I have a special bookshelf for my favorite books.) My plan is to create a compilation of excerpts and build from there. Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon. Janet Malcolm’s Still Pictures. Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood around 1900. Sigrid Nunez’s Sempre Susan. Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments.
These are my “classics.” I paged through, rereading passages underlined by a past me. Back then, I underlined what struck me; now I am looking for how the memory functions on the page and where the craft comes in, the intentionality that takes a memory and turns it into art.
What better project could I ask for right now? I gave myself this assignment on purpose, because I knew I would need it.
If you will be in the Cambridge, NY area in early March, join me for Writing from Memory.
This week in writing
We had our last A Write at the Museum session and I miss this class already. I’m going to keep using visual art prompts to fuel my novel writing. More visual art in all our lives! Art can be an antidote. Art can be a suit of armor.
Speaking of art, look at this gorgeous painting my father-in-law made for us. He named it after the kid because “it has a lot going on.”
This week in reading
This week has contained only snatched minutes here and there for reading but every second I could I was inhaling my ARC of
’s Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story. This book is SO good and so unexpected. It’s part NICU memoir and part wild west ghost story, which sounds incongruent but as you read you’re like, YES, EXACTLY. I am not quite finished but I can already confidently recommend this book to my own readers. If you like Leave, you’ll love Frontier.This week in Leave news
The book tour is officially kicked off!
I could not imagine a better first event than The Rally Reading Series, which features overtly political literature and involves a call to action at every reading.
The audience was amazing. Generous, supportive, welcoming, responsive. Truly a dream crowd. Our host (and hilarious emcee), Ryan D. Matthews, passed the bucket at intermission and raised a bunch of cash for Floyd Bennett Field Neighbors, which has recently transitioned from supporting migrant families living in the tent shelters at Floyd Bennett Field to supporting these families as they are rehoused following the January 15 closure of that shelter.
I read a few short pieces from Leave, including the financial breakdown of our birth, which, spoiler alert, cost WAY more than we expected. The crowd audibly gasped when I read that my newborn baby had his own individual deductible to meet and had to pay his own “room and board” at the hospital, which was deemed by the insurance company to be “not a covered service.” Welcome to for-profit healthcare in the United States of America! I have grown used to these facts, so it was good for me to see people’s surprise and be reminded that we need to keep talking about these issues and telling our stories as part of the fight for universal healthcare.
There is so much to fight for right now, I know. I don’t have great advice for these times. I can say I have been heartened by 100 Days of Creative Resistance and its daily reminders to keep going, keep going. Also, being together in real life with other writers and reading from our work and cheering each other on — that’s powerful, too.
Upcoming Leave events:
Brooklyn, NY | 02.25.2025 | 6:30pm
Official launch + conversation with Sara Lippmann at Lofty Pigeon Books — RSVP
Cambridge, NY | 03.08.2025 | 12:30pm
Mud U class Writing From Memory — RSVP
Philadelphia, PA | 03.13.2025 | 6:30pm
Philly launch + conversation with Jiordan Castle at The Head & The Hand — RSVP
Los Angeles, CA | 03.26-03.29.2025
AWPBrooklyn, NY | 05.25.2025 | 8pm
Ditmas Lit at The Urbane Arts Club
The book comes out two weeks from Tuesday, and after Thursday’s reading I am even more excited about the launch party. Hope to see some of you there/on the road. Until then, go look at some art, read a book, log off, take care of yourself.
Love,
Shayne
Wish I could be at your launch, but I cannot wait to get my finished copy of LEAVE!! And THANK YOU for the amazing, generous shout out😊