November Recap: The Last Must Love Memoir of 2024
We'll be back in January!
Announcements:
The virtual write-in scheduled for this Sunday is unfortunately cancelled.
The next and last write-in of the year will be on Sun. Dec. 8, starting at 5:30 pm EST
Save the date and come write with the Must Love Memoir community before we break for the holidays!
Hello dear memoir lovers,
We did it! We got through an entire year of loving, supporting, and celebrating creative nonfiction together ♥️
Two Tuesdays ago marked our last reading event of 2024 and it was amazing! Even with the unexpected dropout of two readers, members of this community stepped up and filled in with little notice. Even with our little hiccup, the night couldn’t have gone better.
For that, we want to say a special thank you to Ginny Bartolone and Micaela Macagnone for sharing their work, and a big get better soon to Leora Fridman and Jodi M. Savage. We look forward to having them both join us in the future.
We also need to say a giant thank you to those of you who showed up to support the readers and the series; this thing we do here wouldn’t be what it is without YOU there.
As we take a much needed deep breath to juggle the busy end of the year rush, impending doom, and all the other delightful things that make up life, we hope you have a safe and fulfilling holiday season. We’ll be back in January with more readings!
♥️ ,
Krystal and Hope
In case you missed it, here’s a little recap of what our readers shared last Tuesday.
Emma Miller:
Starting the night off strong was Emma, who courageously shared a brand-new piece she started after seeing the election results. Emma’s satirical piece, titled “I am TTLY okay” kept the audience laughing and nodding along with understanding. The essay is Emma’s attempt to process the election results and the fear she (and many of us) have about what the next four years might look like. She joked about the “military-grade security” at her local CVS Pharmacy, while also describing the joy it was to be a poll worker and become better neighbors with her table-mates after working together all day. Using the real-life metaphor of having to mercy-kill a mouse caught on a glue trap that she didn’t know was under her oven, Emma made the point that we can hold on to the good parts even when it feels like everything around us is tragic.
Thanks, Emma for sharing fresh work with us!
Hope Elizabeth Kidd:
Following Emma was myself (Hope)…and I will now awkwardly give you a summary of what I shared. I read a piece called “Subway Rats” about living and mothering in NYC. In this piece, I share about a typical afternoon (from years ago) of taking my youngest child (under 2 at the time) to pick up my four older kids from school. I describe the insanity of bumping a stroller down the subway stairs (which I thankfully don’t have to do anymore) and question the strange impulse of people to casually throw verbal judgment on others while simultaneously harboring a resistance to offer help. Sometimes the judgment impulse feels especially strong to us moms in New York City. But, in the essay, I realize that just like rats on the subway tracks flirt with death but somehow always seem to survive, I am my own version of a surviving (sometimes even thriving!) subway rat.
Micaela Macagnone:
Next up was Micaela, one of the people who generously stepped in at the last minute to read for us. She read from the beginning of her memoir in progress, which is about her restaurateur-turned-alternative-healer father. In this section, Micaela uses gorgeous imagery to describe an evening eating out with her family at one of their restaurants, SPQR. She wrote about “ironed-white napkins”, the server Oxana and her huge “fake boobs”, the arugula salad and fried calamari brought out for appetizers, and a decadent party Micaela had there for her sixth birthday, complete with three separate birthday cakes. She described the secret to eating fresh mozzarella – let it sit at the table for a few minutes to warm up to a perfect creaminess. She wrote about pantomiming making martinis with her sister when the two of them were six and eight years old, and laying her head on her mother’s lap at the end of the evening.
Micaela’s reading left us feeling hungry and wishing we had some perfect fresh mozzarella, but also left us feeling full.
Ginny Bartolone:
After a short break, Ginny took the mic. Ginny, another of our friends who graciously stepped in at the last minute, read a piece that has been accepted for publication and will come out next month! In this essay, she talks about hiking a 150-mile portion of the Camino de Santiago in Portugal. In spite of the fear she felt about beginning a grueling, possibly lonely journey, she takes the first steps of the hike. Ginny described “cerulean tiles” on a building, rays of sunshine, a reverence for nature, and the joy of being in motion. Comparing the three spirits who visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve, Ginny talked about facing the three spirits that haunt her on a hike: loneliness, doubt, and denial.
Lisa Marie Basile:
Lisa Marie, a poet by trade, read some lovely prose for us in the form of a lyric essay. She wrote about being in foster care as a young teen and her mother having a plastic green bin full of her brother’s and her things. The items in the bin tell the story of a portion of their childhoods, and then — nothing (when they moved to foster care and weren’t living with their mother). As a youth, Lisa Marie had handwritten a vampire story in a notebook, which someone found and mailed to her as an adult. Holding the story in her hands as a grown up, she understood she wrote it as a means of coping, a way to survive. In the essay, Lisa Marie wrote that PTSD and complex trauma can affect our memories, and about trying to remember the mystery of herself. Which memories are true and real, and which memories are faulty or have been altered? With the written word, Lisa Marie attempts to “write herself whole.”
Alex Alberto (they/them):
Last but far from least, Alex closed us out with some samples from their book Entwined: Essays on Polyamory and Creating Home, published earlier this year (way to go, Alex!!) They first read from the beginning of the book explaining the term metamour. In polyamory, that means a partner’s other partner. They explained it using a vignette about sharing funny photos with their metamour, photos of the partner both Alex and the metamour were involved with. In another section that was particularly humorous, Alex read about how they managed situations in the beginning of their polyamory journey, versus the middle of it, versus being a “seasoned” polyamorist. They described how they acted when their partner was off on a date with someone else. In the beginning, they might have scrambled on an app to find a date for themselves so they’re distracted. An “intermediate” polyamorist wouldn’t be quite so desperate for distraction by another date, but might watch some old favorite shows while eating vegetarian take out. And a “seasoned” polyamorist might be downright thankful for a night to themselves and be asleep long before the partner comes home.
All of our readers were incredible, and the room had just what we needed to fill us up, and help us make it through the busy weeks ahead. We can’t thank you all enough for staying on this journey and supporting this series through another year.
We’ll see you all back at Jake’s Dilemma in 2025!