We know it's late...but here is April's reading recap
To make it up to you, we added our wonderful May lineup too!
Hello dear memoir lovers,
Boy are we late with last month’s recap 😬 We are so late in fact that we’re going to combine April’s recap with May’s reading lineup, just to show you all how efficient we can be!
There are a few things going on behind the scenes here at Must Love Memoir, besides just the nicer weather. You might have seen our last post announcing that we’re opening for submissions again in just a few weeks. The Google form will be available to all free subscribers on May 15 and will close June 15 — so get your writing ready!
Also, thanks to Krystal’s amazing partner Ryan, we have a beautiful new website up and running where you can check on all upcoming readers. Going forward, that will be the best place to find full lineups and bios. We will be keeping it as updated as possible!
Now for April’s recap. It was a warm spot on an otherwise chilly evening, featuring another bad-ass all-female line up. In case you missed it, here’s a little summary of what our readers shared.
We hope you’re all enjoying the sunshine and fresh flower and can’t wait to see you all at our next reading on May 13!
♥️ ,
Krystal and Hope
First was Kristine Esser Slentz, a poet by trade. She treated the audience to two flash nonfiction pieces as well as a longer selection. Kristine’s way with words and imagery were stunning. Her first flash piece had a surprising, powerful ending about cervical cancer, but at least her hair is healthy enough to impress the hairdressers at the salon.
Following Kristine was Krystal Orwig herself, who read a section from her memoir in progress. She read a scene from early childhood where she was in a pool, and her mother was sitting nearby, letting the sun absorb her hangover. Young Krystal wandered too far from the steps, and her mother had to pull her to the surface. The scene connected to her father, who struggled with drug addiction, and lead into how her parents rushed into marriage at just 18 years old.
Alexandra Chan shared next, reading from the very beginning of her memoir In the Garden Behind the Moon, a family history. In the section she read, Alexandra shared about her grandfather, who was born in the year of the horse, and how his name means “Great Phoenix.” He was part of a revolution in Guangzhou, China, and had to escape before being executed for said revolution. He had a harrowing ocean adventure, surrounded by death, and eventually immigrating to America.
Following Alexandra came Vesna Jaksic Lowe, a native of Croatia, who read a piece called “Reclaiming My Name.” In this essay, she wrote of the frustration of being trapped in an airport due to a mistake on the ticket about one of her names, frustrated that her international identity warrants an explanation. Like many, she has been repeatedly pressured to drop part of her name in order to be a “good immigrant.” But, she wrote, “Jaksic is part of my name, and I want it back.”
Florence Wetzel took the mic next and read from her book Sara, My Sara, a memoir about the death of her dear friend shortly after the death of her mother. In a deeply moving scene, Florence read about bringing her mother home from the hospital for hospice care because “home is home.” The most poignant part that she read was how the dogs were too sad to lie next to the mother as she was dying, but once she had passed, they snuggled next to her body.
Bringing the night to a close was a very special reading from Emily Raboteau, our beloved MFA professor and Hope’s thesis advisor. She read from the newly released paperback version of her latest book Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against the Apocalypse. She shared an essay that covered meeting her husband, having two children, and taking her children to parks when they were little. Despite seeing disturbing inequities all around her, (for example, one mother at a playground told her that it was disappointing she lived one block away from “the good school”), at least “the park was the city’s great equalizer.”
May Lineup
Abeer Y. Hoque is a Nigerian-born Bangladeshi American writer and photographer. She likes fanny bags, Szechuan fried peanuts, and fresh starts. Her books include a coffee table book (The Long Way Home), a linked collection of stories, poems, and photographs (The Lovers and the Leavers), and a memoir (Olive Witch). See more at olivewitch.com.
Molly Roden Winter is the author of the New York Times bestseller, MORE: A Memoir of Open Marriage. Her essays have appeared in Time, The Cut, Romper, and elsewhere. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with her husband and two part-time roommates also known as her sons.
Freda Epum is a Nigerian American writer and artist. She is the author of two chapbooks, Input/Output and Entryways into memories that might assemble me, which won the Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Competition. She is the co-creator of the Black American Tree Project, an interactive workshop about the legacies of slavery in American society. Epum’s work has been published in The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Entropy, Bending Genres, and others. She received her MFA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Her work has been supported by Lambda Literary, the Tin House Workshop, VONA, the Ragdale Foundation, the Anderson Center at Tower View, and the Jordan-Goodman Prize. Originally from Tucson, she now lives in Cincinnati.
Hope Elizabeth Kidd lives in New York City with her husband, five children, and an assortment of pets. She enjoys writing about motherhood, mental health, and body image. She is working on a memoir about her childhood in Zimbabwe and recently completed her MFA in creative writing from the City College of New York. She has been published in MUTHA magazine, Halfway Down the Stairs, the Manifest Station, and a print anthology by Horns and Rattles Press. For two years, she worked as an editor on Promethean, City College’s literary journal. At any given moment, you can find her drinking a mocha or complaining about laundry.
Randee Dawn is the bestselling author of the "funny as hell" pop culture fantasy novel Tune in Tomorrow. She has three novels out in 2025: Dark Celtic musical fantasies The Only Song Worth Singing and Leave No Trace (ArcManor/Caezik) and the next funny foray into the "Tune-iverse," We Interrupt This Program (Solaris Nova). Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, including most recently Dark Spores: Stories We Tell After Midnight, Vol. 4. She is the co-author of The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion. A veteran entertainment journalist for The LA Times, Variety and Today.com, Randee lives in Brooklyn.
Briallen Hopper is the author of Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions and Gilead Reread (forthcoming), and an editor at the online magazine Killing the Buddha and the independent press And Other Stories. She teaches creative writing at Queens College, CUNY and in the Yale Prison Education Initiative.
