Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter, especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for November is Science, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Carolyn Hays and Lori discuss:

• Why writing in second-person is perfect when writing about gender.
• How to recognize a scene while you’re living through it.
• When to write out a scene in your memoir and when to summarize it.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Carolyn Hays

Carolyn Hays is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, bestselling author who has chosen to publish A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter under a pen name to protect the privacy of her family. 

Her novels have been published by Hachette, Simon and Schuster, and HarperCollins; her books are also widely translated. A Girlhood will have four overseas editions, including those by Picador UK and Flammarion in France. 

Her past books have been listed as New York Times Notable Books of the Year and Kirkus’s Best Fiction of the Year, and she’s written for National Public Radio and the Washington Post.

You can find her on her website or follow her publishers on Twitter at @PressShopPR and @BlairPublisher.

A Girlhood: Letter to my Transgender Daughter

A parent’s love letter to a daughter who has always known exactly who she is.

One ordinary day, a caseworker from the Department of Children and Families knocked on the Hays family’s door to investigate an anonymous complaint about the upbringing of their transgender child. It was this knock, this threat, that began the family’s journey out of the Bible Belt but never far from the hate and fear resting at the nation’s core.

Self-aware and intimate, A Girlhood asks us all to love better, not just for the sake of Hays’s child but for children everywhere enduring injustice and prejudice just as they begin to understand themselves. A Girlhood is a call to action, an ode to community, a plea for empathy, a hope for a better future. A Girlhood is a love letter to a child who has always known exactly who she is–and who is waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

For more information about the resources Carolyn mentions in this episode please click here.

Link to Episode 437

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Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 437: The Freedom of a Pen Name and the Power of Voice in Memoir – Interview with Carolyn Hays appeared first on DIY MFA.

Amy lives in Chicago with her husband, two children, a dog and her four puppies, a parakeet, sometimes chicks and a part-time fish, but, as of today, no elephants or peacocks. Check back.

Her writing has won the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Christopher Award, and the SCBWI-Illinois Laura Crawford Memorial Mentorship, and her essays and poetry have appeared in collections and literary journals including The Bellingham Review, Creative Nonfiction and River Teeth.

She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She teaches calculus and number theory classes at Northwestern University. She is the managing editor for the SCBWI-IL Prairie Wind. And she is the writer-in-residence at St. Gregory the Great, where she has a little office in a big building with a bad internet connection, where she tries to get work done (in theory).

In this episode Amy and I discuss:

• How the relationship between the Zhou brothers inspired her book.
• What Amy had to do to find the perfect illustrator for her book.
• Why Amy believes it is important to get the blessing from the real-life figures that inspire your writing. 

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Amy’s writing has won the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Christopher Award, and the SCBWI-Illinois Laura Crawford Memorial Mentorship, and her essays and poetry have appeared in collections and literary journals including The Bellingham Review, Creative Nonfiction and River Teeth. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She teaches calculus and number theory classes at Northwestern University. She is the managing editor for the SCBWI-IL Prairie Wind. And she is the writer-in-residence at St. Gregory the Great.

You can find out more about Amy on her website or follow her on Twitter.

Flying Paintings

First there was one Zhou brother, and then there were two. They lived in a bookstore with their grandmother, Po Po, whose stories of paintings that flew through the air and landed on mountain cliffs inspired them to create their own art. Amid the turbulence of China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, the Zhou Brothers began painting together on the same canvas. Today, ShanZuo and DaHuang Zhou are icons in the art world, renowned for working side by side on all their paintings and sculptures.

In this extraordinary biography, author Amy Alznauer joins with the Zhou Brothers to tell the story of their unique and often difficult childhood and their pursuit of a wild, impossible dream. The lyrical writing blends elements of legend, while the brothers’ dramatic illustrations soar with vibrant colors and surreal imagery from ancient Chinese cliff paintings. An inspiration for young artists and dreamers of all kinds, this deeply felt collaboration explores how art can bring people together, as well as set them free.

The epic story of two Chinese brothers who became art-world legends, illustrated with stunning paintings by the artists themselves.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Also by Amy Alznauer

The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity

In 1887 in India, a boy named Ramanujan is born with a passion for numbers. He sees numbers in the squares of light pricking his thatched roof and in the beasts dancing on the temple tower. He writes mathematics with his finger in the sand, across the pages of his notebooks, and with chalk on the temple floor. “What is small?” he wonders. “What is big?” Head in the clouds, Ramanujan struggles in school — but his mother knows that her son and his ideas have a purpose. As he grows up, Ramanujan reinvents much of modern mathematics, but where in the world could he find someone to understand what he has conceived? 

Author Amy Alznauer gently introduces young readers to math concepts while Daniel Miyares’s illustrations bring the wonder of Ramanujan’s world to life in the inspiring real-life story of a boy who changed mathematics and science forever. Back matter includes a bibliography and an author’s note recounting more of Ramanujan’s life and accomplishments, as well as the author’s father’s remarkable discovery of Ramanujan’s Lost Notebook.

The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor

When she was young, the writer Flannery O’Connor was captivated by the chickens in her yard. She’d watch their wings flap, their beaks peck, and their eyes glint. At age six, her life was forever changed when she and a chicken she had been training to walk forwards and backwards were featured in the news, and she realized that people want to see what is odd and strange in life. But while she loved birds of all varieties and kept several species around the house, it was the peacocks that came to dominate her life. Written by Amy Alznauer with devotional attention to all things odd and illustrated in radiant paint by Ping Zhu, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor explores the beginnings of one author’s lifelong obsession.

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 326: Painting, Math, and Tiny Houses: Writing the Picture Book Biography – Interview with Amy Alznauer appeared first on DIY MFA.

Beginning with the definitive moment in someone’s life is a biographer’s trick. It is also a tip for all writers wishing to capture a reader’s attention instantly. This fall, more than the usual amount of high-profile biographies, memoirs and autobiographies are being published. I list five of the most anticipated releases below. First, I’ll review definitions and list some questions to help you read these new titles like a writer.

The Definitions

Lindbergh is a classic example of biography. It is the complete, detailed story of Charles Lindbergh’s life written by an outside author. A. Scott Berg conducted extensive research to get to know his subject. He interviewed family members and tracked down primary sources such as letters and diaries. The result is a formal, thorough picture of an individual with verification to back it up.

Sometimes, a biography is published that has the word “unauthorized” in its subtitle. That means the author did not have the cooperation of the subject or the subject’s family members.  If any interviews were done, they are usually with people well outside the subject’s inner circle. For example, a neighbor who once lived in the same apartment complex but had limited interaction with the person. Research is usually limited to secondary, and sometimes questionable sources, such as magazine articles and blog posts. These books are less detailed, more gossipy products such as Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton or Kitty Kelley’s books about Oprah Winfrey, the British royal family and Nancy Reagan.

We all remember from grade school that autobiography is someone’s life story written by the person who lived it (auto=self + bio=life + graph=writing). It encompasses the person’s entire life up to the time of publication, is chronological, and written in the first person. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is such a work. Douglass begins by stating he is unsure of the exact year of his birth. His earliest memories are of his mother’s secret nighttime visits to him, a young slave boy ripped from family and sent to a different plantation. He then recounts his pre-teen years in Baltimore where he was introduced to reading, several barely survivable plantations in his late teens and twenties, and his eventual escape and abolitionist work as an adult.

Where the line gets blurry, however, is when it comes to memoir. Bookstores place memoirs, biographies and autobiographies all on the same shelves. An English major, however, will tell you that memoirs are distinct. Traditionally, a memoir looks at only one portion of a person’s life—a “memory.” Events may flow freely in a randomized fashion with large doses of reflection carefully added. This recipe yields a more literary interpretation of a time or era. One of the most celebrated memoirs is Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Remembering the year following her husband’s death, she writes:

“This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”

The Questions

After determining if the work is a biography, autobiography or memoir, here are other brain ticklers for you to entertain.

• How did the author choose to start? Chronologically or with a defining moment? Is it effective enough to grab a reader’s attention?
• What’s the ending like? Is something from the beginning mirrored at the end?  Screenwriters call this a frame. An example of this can again be seen in the Lindbergh biography. Early on, the author mentions the particular shade of blue sky sometimes seen in Sweden, the home of Lindbergh’s ancestors. He concludes the book with Lindbergh’s burial in Hawaii under a similarly colored sky.
• Where did the author get their information? Personal experience, interviews, primary or secondary sources? Did their research methods make the account more or less believable?
• If references and footnotes are used, where are they placed? Does the placement add to or detract from the flow of the narrative?
• Are there any extraneous details that could have been left out? For example, I despise extensive genealogies that don’t shed new light on a person. A good rule of thumb is to go only one or two generations back. To the contrary, was there something vital left out that would have given a more complete understanding of the person?

And Finally…The New Releases

Becoming by Michelle Obama

The former First Lady discusses the people and events that transformed her into the person she is today. Expect a lot of buzz when this book is available in November. Obama is even traveling around the country to meet readers and answer their questions.

The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King

While hard to believe, this is the first biography of the children’s television pioneer. The author, a former journalist, did thorough archival research to paint a vibrant picture of the man we knew only through the television screen.

In Pieces by Sally Field

The academy-award winning actress examines her painful childhood and how it impacted her fifty-year acting career. Although she mentions famous people she met along the way, her honest contemplations about family make this the most literary memoir of the fall.

Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton by Tilar J. Mazzeo

When Ron Chernow wrote a biography of Alexander Hamilton in 2005, he had no idea it would produce one of the most successful musicals of all time. Until now, little has been written about Eliza Hamilton except for historical fiction and children’s works. In this biography by Tilar J. Mazzeo, we find out what became of Eliza after her husband’s death by duel.

Place of Gold: Coming of Age with South Africa by Trevor Noah

Readers are still devouring Noah’s first memoir Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. If you wondered how Noah rose from apartheid to host of The Daily Show, this second installment will provide some clues. Since Noah is multilingual, this would be a good—and beautiful—title to listen to in audio version.

Perusing someone’s life story provides an excellent opportunity to read like a writer.  When an author combines life-defining moments with solid research, a biography can be both informative and illuminating.  For more examples, check out Amazon’s list of 100 Biographies & Memoirs to Read in a Lifetime.

Terri Frank is a professional librarian and holds a Master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working in a library, she’s probably visiting a library with her husband and two kids. Her current writing projects include a novel about a tuberculosis sanitorium.

The post Five Biographies & Memoirs for your Fall Reading List appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing author Cynthia Grady on the show!

Cynthia has earned master’s degrees in Children’s Literature, Library Science, and the Classics. She taught elementary school in her home state of California and was a children’s librarian for seventeen years before relocating to New Mexico where she now writes books for young readers.

She is the author of a book of poetry for children and two nonfiction picture books. The latest of her picture books, Write to Me: Letters from Japanese American Children to the Librarian They Left Behind, is the story of Clara Breed the librarian who offered hope and comfort to Japanese American children through books during their internment in World War II.

Listen in as we talk about this beautiful book, and how the power of story can comfort and connect us.

In this episode Cynthia and I discuss:

• Using primary sources to assemble a picture book biography.
• How to strategically negotiate for your illustrations as an author.
• Tips to write engaging nonfiction for young readers.
• Tackling serious topics in picture books.
• The benefits of productive procrastination.

Plus, Cynthia’s #1 tip for writers.

About Cynthia Grady

Cynthia Grady grew up in the Bay Area in California and taught elementary school there. She moved east for graduate school and earned a master’s degrees in Children’s Literature, Library Science, and the Classics. She was a children’s librarian for 17 years before relocating to New Mexico, where she writes, makes quilts, enjoys her pet rabbits, and is learning how to garden in the desert.

Cynthia has authored three books for children: 1 book of poetry and two nonfiction picture books, the latest of which, Write to Me: Letters from Japanese American Children to the Librarian They Left Behind, is now available.

To connect with Cynthia check out her website at www.cynthiagrady.com.

Write to Me: Letters from Japanese American Children to the Librarian They Left Behind

When Executive Order 9066 is enacted after the attack at Pearl Harbor, children’s librarian Clara Breed’s young Japanese American patrons are to be imprisoned in the desert. Before they are moved, Miss Breed asks the children to write her letters, and she gives them books to take with them.

Through the three years of their internment, the children correspond with Miss Breed, sharing their stories, providing feedback on books, and creating a record of their experiences during the war.

Using excerpts from children’s letters held at the Japanese American National Museum, author Cynthia Grady presents a difficult subject with honesty and hope.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 203: The Art of Nonfiction Picture Books — Interview with Cynthia Grady appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I am delighted to have author and journalist Steven Gaines on the show!

Steven is the bestselling author of a number of biographies and nonfiction books including Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons and The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles.

His journalism has appeared in several major publications such as Vanity Fair and The New York Times, and he is  the co-founder and past vice-chairman of the Hamptons International Film Festival.

After decades of writing the life stories of others, Steven’s latest work, his memoir One of these Things First, showcases a defining moment in his own life.

Listen in as we chat about the literary art of writing a memoir that is both truthful, and tells an engaging story for readers.

In this episode Steven and I discuss:

• How to identify the juicy moments of your life to craft into a memoir.
• Finding, but not clinging, to the “tent pole” of your story.
• Pushing the story forward and staying true to the events.
• The role of humor in memoir, and how to do it right.
• The when, where, and how of releasing your story to the world.

Plus, Steven’s #1 tip for writers.

About Steven Gaines

Steven Gaines is the bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons, The Sky’s the Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan, The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles, and Simply Halston, the biography of the fashion designer, among other books.

His journalism has appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Observer, The New York Times, and New York magazine where he was a contributing editor for 12 years. The co-founder and past vice-chairman of the Hamptons International Film Festival, Gaines has lived on the east end of Long Island for more than 40 years.

His memoir, One of These Things First, is now available in both hardcover and paperback.

To connect with Steven check out his website at www.stevengaines.com.

One of These Things First

This book follows the story of Gaines as a 15-year-old Jewish boy in 1960’s Brooklyn and his trajectory from his grandparent’s bra and girdle store to, after a failed suicide attempt, a private room in one of the most exclusive psychiatric hospitals in the world.

Here he meets a brilliant young psychiatrist who promises to cure him of his homosexuality and provide him with the normalcy he longs for. At the hospital he also meets a Broadway producer, the husband of superstar Mary Martin, who opens a new world for him, an editor who claims she was President John F. Kennedy’s lover and other eccentric, wealthy neurotics, who make him feel like “Eliza Doolittle at the psycho country club.”

Now a journalist, novelist and biographer who has chronicled some of the 20th century’s most notable artists such as the Beatles and fashion designer Halston, Gaines takes a wry look back at his early years and coming out in Brooklyn.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 195

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 195: The Art of Writing Memoir — Interview with Steven Gaines appeared first on DIY MFA.