Sarah Madges will be reading at Difficult to Name on March 11.
You recently told me that one of the difficulties of writing memoir is that you are constantly changing as a person. Could you expand on that idea?
I've been working on the same book-length essay (idk, lyric essay, work of subjective criticism, people call it so many things) for about a year. Since I pull primarily from my personal experience and contemporary concerns re: culture/politics (especially feminism), I've found it hard to maintain a consistent "narrator." As I grow and change as a person in real life, and as the cultural and political landscape changes around me, necessarily, me as a "character" changes. I know it's not just a problem for nonfiction writers, but it becomes difficult because I keep wanting to tackle new issues as they become more urgent (thanks to Agent Orange), and the subject of the book I intended to write is beginning to shift focus.
You do a lot of great stuff in the literary community. You recently had an essay collected in "A Shadow Map" from Civil Coping Mechanisms, you host the poetry reading series Mental Marginalia and you run Handwritten, which is a really cool handwriting event. I guess this isn't a question, just wanted to say thank you.
Thank *you*!
What can people expect from your reading?
People can expect something about abortion, sexual assault/rape, trauma, and/or mental illness. I'm a lot of fun.