How do you write about yourself and others? with Sari Botton (From the Archives)

The Book I HAD to Write

For this final post of 2023, here’s one from the archives — perhaps the most popular episode of The Book I Had to Write podcast.

In this segment, I talk with Sari Botton, the author of the memoir/essay collection …And You May Find Yourself, and the founder of Oldster magazine.

Back around 2010, Sari started an interview series at The Rumpus called “Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me.”

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.

However, when she herself was first working on memoir, Sari says she felt paralyzed by the fear of hurting those closest to her.

Over the course of a dozen years, Sari grappled extensively with how to give herself permission to write about herself and others. As her 2022 memoir-in-essays, And You May Find Yourself..., started coming together during the pandemic, 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 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 Oldster magazine, which was then a newer project for Sari, and is now an extremely-popular Substack 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.

In case you’re curious, here are some related from 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

Working on a memoir? Here are some additional resources for how to handle 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